According to a poll released today by TheFrisky.com, a decisive majority of empty, spiritually diseased young women who read this site would rather trade places with Jersey Shore‘s Snooki than Bristol Palin, Heidi Montag, Britney Spears, Vienna Girardi or Lindsay Lohan. I’ve half-jested before about putting geekboy fans of CG superhero movies into green reeducation camps. It’s a benevolent idea at heart — to try and detoxify people who’ve become so polluted with various media poisons that they’re unable to recognize healthy aesthetic convictions, and have to come to prefer sequential junk-food highs as a way of life. Let’s just say the readers of TheFrisky.com would be in for some helpful lifestyle changes If I was dictator.

In an 8.9 New Yorker posting, Richard Brody is urging the daring and the willing to catch Elaine May‘s Ishtar tomorrow morning on Turner Classic Movies at 4 am (i.e., about 11 hours from now). Brody calls this misunderstood 1987 calamity “one of the most original, audacious, and inventive movies — and funniest comedies — of modern times. It isn’t just a movie worth rescuing for a few choice bits; it’s a thoroughgoing, beginning-to-end masterwork.”

Warren Beatty as “Lyle” in Elaine May’s Ishtar.

All right, now that’s just horseshit. Over-cranked, over-exuberant, not trustworthy. And yet Ishtar, on the whole, is worth seeing. Here’s how I explained it last January:

(1) “The general…well, at least marginal view that Ishtar is better than its rep and is actually hilarious in portions”; (2) “Ishtar was one of the first ‘no-laugh funny’ films ever released. That was a completely new concept back then, and people didn’t know what to make of it”; (3) “Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman played a pair of profoundly untalented New York-based songwriters — I remember that much clearly. I also recall that the first half hour or so played pretty well, and that the film’s troubles didn’t start until they travelled to Morocco…Ishtar, I mean. I remember that the best no-laugh humor happened when Beatty and Hoffman were compulsively composing awful songs”; (4) “Ishtar is a decent (some would say inspired) piece of entertainment, a legendary Hollywood debacle that, like Heaven’s Gate, gradually found a measure of respect. Okay, among people with a slightly corroded and perverse sense of humor but still, no one today thinks of Ishtar as a film to be shunned. I haven’t conducted a poll, but I’ll bet very few critics would put it down, and that most would probably say ‘not half bad.'”

I’m also amused by a Pauline Kael line from her original review (which Brody quotes): “The movie certainly isn’t dislikable; you observe the fine touches. But you feel as if your mind is wilting.”

Bleeding Cool‘s Rich Johnston reported last Friday that 20th Century Fox has bought screen rights to Nemesis, a Mark Millar/Steven McNiven graphic novel that Tony Scott may…okay, probably will wind up directing with Scott Free producing. Because the world simply can’t wait for another property about another costumed vigilante a la Tony Stark (i.e., eccentric billionaire), and another plot about this guy’s parents having been killed and the vigilante bent on revenge, etc.

Am I hallucinating? Is this a dream? I don’t how how to say this differently so I’m just going to repeat that I really can’t stand this any longer. I thought I made it clear during ComicCon but I guess some people were busy or offline and didn’t get the word: no more big-studio comic-book movies of any kind…ever!

Kill all comic-book movies and hunt down the whiskered, T-shirted geeks in flip-flops who are dying to see them. Kill all comic-book movies and hunt down the whiskered, T-shirted geeks in flip-flops who are dying to see them. Kill all comic-book movies and hunt down the whiskered, T-shirted geeks in flip-flops who are dying to see them. Kill all comic-book movies and hunt down the whiskered, T-shirted geeks in flip-flops who are dying to see them.

And no, I don’t care about the twist, which Millar (Kick Ass, Wanted) has explained as follows: “What if Batman was a total cunt?” That’s interesting for about four or five seconds. After that it’s a non-starter because a ne’er-do-well vigilante in faux-superhero guise is the same formula crap flipped over on its back. Stories and movies like this are oppressive, poisonous, polluting our souls. Stop making them, stop making them, stop making them, stop making them.

Sylvester Stallone‘s The Expendables “isn’t a good movie — it’s merely a serviceable one,” writes Marshall Fine. “Stallone wants it to be a valedictory, perhaps: a meditation on the way men of violence live their lives and live with themselves. But Unforgiven it ain’t. Neither is it The Wild Bunch nor The Dirty Dozen. It wants to be, but, again, there’s not that much depth.

“Stallone would like to fancy himself an auteur on the order of Clint Eastwood: a director/writer who happens to act and who, eventually, could step behind the camera full-time. But as The Expendables shows, he is, at best, a journeyman filmmaker. He’s capable of assembling a movie that is mildly coherent, but not one that engages the audience emotionally or intellectually. Instead, it’s all about the big-bang theory: the bigger the bangs (explosions, gunshots, mammoth fireballs), the bigger the box-office. In theory, anyway.

“It’s all fairly economical: a little action, a few stale wisecracks – and then one huge blowout at the end. But two things keep the film from rising past the level of middling (which is a generous description).

“The script is the main problem. Written by Dave Callaham and rewritten by Stallone, it wants to have humor, action, thrills and drama all jostling for your attention. But aside from the action itself, the rest of it — from Barney’s conscience-stricken decision to go back to the island to the attempts at banter involving Jet Li — seems sketched out, rather than written

“The other problem is the editing, [which] succumbs to the chopped-salad school of film cutting. None of the mano e mano duke-outs are ever given a clean, clear look. Rather, the action is sliced into fragments so that you never have a sense of how the action builds; instead, it’s all pay-offs – punches that connect, kicks that deliver, body-slams that raise a cloud of dust. Or diced-up action [that] is intercut further with scenes of what the other characters are doing at the same time. There’s no continuity to the action, and so no sense of fulfillment.

I wrote a couple weeks ago about how it’s possible to buy into an implausible movie like Salt. The Expendables, however, is both implausible and ridiculous, a formula on to which other formulas have been carelessly grafted. I’d say that I already can smell the sequel, but I believe that odor is coming from this film.”

My father, a grumpy rationalist, never bought into religion. But my mother did, to my great distress, and so she raised me as a Episcopalian. I was unenthused, reluctant. I know I should have just relaxed and rolled with it. The Episcopal church, after all, was thought to be a kind of mild-mannered, middle-class path to God. Not as stringent or demanding as Catholicism. Its parishioners were less passionate than the Methodists. It was thought that even Presbyterians were a little more Catholic-y than Episcopalians.

Episcopalian ministers weren’t that dogmatic; they were liberal guys who drank wine and smoked pipes and led discreet hetero lifestyles. They weren’t into guilt-tripping or rapping anyone’s knuckles. I think of them now as middle-aged, easy-going guys who tended to look like Hugh Hefner or Richard Attenborough.

But none of these distinctions mattered to me back then. All religions were prison, I felt. In my view the Episcopalian faith wasn’t about spirit or salvation as much as socializing and singing in church and wearing suits. I despised the whole charade — going to catechism classes, taking part in religious pageants, Holy Communion, etc. But some kind of receptivity to the idea or observance of religion sunk in over the years. Getting drilled for years with Episcopalian teachings and rituals has a way of softening you up, I suppose.

What happened is that out of the blue I suddenly got into Hinduism when I turned 20. Hinduism, that is, by way of LSD and readings of the Bhagavad Gita. I found serious satori. I walked around all the time with a blissed-out expression. I became the kind of guy you would never, ever invite to parties because all I would do was sit on the floor in the lotus position and talk about enlightenment. I never became a practicing Hindu, and in fact gradually blew the whole thing off as I got a bit older. I nonetheless feel much more aligned today with Hinduism — the white middle-class LSD kind — than I’ve ever felt for any of the approved suburban white-people faiths.

All to say that I vaguely relate to Julia Roberts‘ recent declaration that she’s become a practicing Hindu (i.e., “going to temple to chant and pray and celebrate” with her three children and husband-cameraman Daniel Moder, etc.) She got into Hinduism, she says, during the making of movie Eat Pray Love in India.

Due respect to the N.Y. Times editors who worked on John Anderson‘s profile of Eddie Marsan, but Marsan isn’t “that guy,” as their headline states. He’s that brute, that British oaf, that homely animal, that rage-hound, that Mike Leigh regular, that half-psychopath, that proletariat muttonhead.

Eddie Marsan

In my book “that guy” tends to refer to a persona created and maintained by a leading actor. It suggests acceptance, approval, affection. It means “a guy we might choose to be if we weren’t already taken,” etc. Robert Redford used to play “that guy” during the ’70s and early ’80s…okay?

“Who’s the baddest dude in the galaxy? Who’s slicker that Super-Fly? Cooler than Captain Kirk?” The trailer was shown at ComicCon 2010. A website was discovered a few days later. Patrick Sauriol‘s Coming Attractions did a whole run-down on Blackstar Warrior on 7.29.

I still can’t figure what year this film was made in. Obviously well after the Blaxploitation wave of the early to mid ’70s. It was most likely produced after The Empire Strikes Back (’80) but before Return of the Jedi (’83).

Here’s the documentary about the film’s discovery: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

“Cut the charm, Lando!” “Lando shuts the man up.” “No, gentleman — he is dangerous. Calrissian must be destroyed!”

“I’ll remember you, honey,” a sassy Paul Newman said to Patricia Neal as she stepped onto a bus in Hud. “You’re the one that got away.” Actually Neal, who died yesterday of lung cancer at age 84, was the one who stuck around and toughed it out.

She led a long, distinguished, sometimes tumultuous life, and yet her most lasting impression — for fans like myself anyway — is that of a cultivated, unfussy woman who, in her prime, was probably amazing in bed. You’re not supposed to mention stuff like this when a respected octogenarian philanthropist (which Neal was) passes away, but I would have loved to have gotten lucky with her around 1950 or so, around the time she made The Day The Earth Stood Still. A little while after the end of her three-year love affair with Gary Cooper, I mean, and before she met Roald Dahl, her husband of 30 years, in ’51.

How does one stifle erotic associations with a pistol-hot lass whose heated entanglement with Cooper in the late ’40s is a tragic Hollywood legend? (He ended it and returned to his wife, and Neal regretfully had an abortion.) Couple this with Neal’s hotel-room scenes with Andy Griffith in A Face in the Crowd (’57), and especially her portrayal of the sleepily sensual Alma in Martin Ritt‘s Hud (’63), for which won a Best Actress Oscar in 1964, and you’re talking one hot mama. That deep husky voice of hers only enhances the vibe, of course.

Neal is also remembered, sadly, as the actress who got hit with awful cards when two of her children with Dahl suffered tragedy — a son brain-damaged by a taxi accident in Manhattan, a daughter dead from measles at age 7. This was followed by Neal herself being nearly destroyed by three strokes — i.e., cerebral aneurysms — in ’65. She was left immobile and speechless, but gradually recovered. Neal returned to acting in ’68 with The Subject Was Roses.

“I think I was born stubborn, that’s all,” Neal says in a biography on the website of the Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center.

Roald Dahl’s Gipsy House, taken by yours truly in Great Missenden, England, during last fall’s Fantastic Mr. Fox junket.

And then she divorced Dahl in ’83 after learning of his affair with Felicity Crosland, whom Dahl married and stayed with until his death in 1990. Neal had lived with Dahl at his Gipsy House estate in Great Missenden, England (where I visited last fall during the Fantastic Mr. Fox junket) for 25-plus years. She lived the remainder of her life in New York and Martha’s Vineyard.

For me, Alma is her greatest performance, closely followed by her portrayal of an ambitious TV journalist in A Face in The Crowd. It’s odd that her work in Hud led to a Best Actress Oscar as Alma is clearly a supporting role. Hud is an ensemble thing, but it obviously belongs to Newman with Neal and her two costars, Brandon de Wilde and Melvyn Douglas, vying for secondary honors. I’m not saying Neal didn’t earn it. She was awesome in the part.

I love her Alma-isms. I love her earthy drawl and the way she hands out peach ice cream on the front porch after dinner. I love the way she places a cold glass of lemonade on De Wilde’s forehead after he’s been kicked around inside a cattle pen. I love the sexual tension in her scenes with Newman. “Ahve already spent time with one cold-hearted bastard,” she says after he’s made an unwelcome pass. “Ahm not lookin’ for another.” You believe her for the most part, but not entirely.

I haven’t even mentioned her performance in The Fountainhead (1949). It’s hard to like that film because the Ayn Rand dialogue sounds so pretentious. (“I wish I had never seen your building,” Neal says at one point. “It’s the things that we admire or want that enslave us. I’m not easy to bring into submission.”) At least she gets through it without sounding dopey or bewildered.

Very few have seen Neal in a 1964 black-and-white film called Psyche ’59, although it’s watchable on YouTube.

She played a nurse who has an affair with John Wayne in Otto Preminger‘s In Harm’s Way (’65). Duke, 57 or 58, was looking a little saggy and beefy in that film, and yet Neal, only 38 or 39 but with her looks starting to decline, was judged an appropriate romantic match. That’s Hollywood for you. When you’re done as an erotic object, they really let you know it.

Worth 1000 has posted several entries in a minimalist movie-poster series. I’m waiting for the connection between a gasoline hose and Zoolander to kick in. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it. Maybe I’m thinking too strenuously. Gayboy humor, fishnet T-shirts, Owen Wilson, teeny-weeny cell phone, etc.

With its earnings of $11.1 million, Salt has taken the highly coveted fourth-place spot, beating back Dinner for Schmucks ($10.4 million, down 56%) and Despicable Me ($9.4 million, down 39%). Step Up, as expected, retreated to third place after coming in second on Friday — it will finish tonight with $15.4 million. The Other Guys is the walk-away winner, as reported, with $35.6 million. Inception has come in second with $19 million even.

A Bluray of Jack Clayton‘s The Innocents (’61) is out on 8.23…in England. Still haven’t determined if it’s an all-region; I’m presuming it’s not. Apart from my fetish for monochrome Scope, The Innocents is attractive for being nearly as scary as Robert Wise‘s The Haunting (’63), also shot in the same format. A powerful tone of eerie creepiness kicks in during the last third. That shot of a female ghost (or, if you will, a motionless dead woman standing in the reeds along a river) has never left my mind.

Some other longed-for black-and-white Bluray Scope films: The Hustler, Battle Cry, Love Me Tender, A Hatful of Rain, Man of a Thousand Faces, The Three Faces of Eve, The Roots of Heaven, The Young Lions, The Best of Everything, Our Man In Havana, Sink the Bismarck!, Sons and Lovers.