A pre-screening conversation at the Tribeca Screening Room last night, two or three minutes before The King’s Speech began, was about a review that called Mark Romanek‘s Never Let Me Go (Fox Searchlight, 9.15) a “masterpiece.” He’s wrong, one guy said. It’s one of those films for which the phrase “very well done for what it is” was invented, said another. It very gently suffocates. “Really sensitive, delicate, anguished and very carefully made,” I replied. “But it’s morose, and that plus the passivity and resignation doesn’t work.”

Update: Arrived in Toronto at 1:15 pm. Welcomely cooler here than Manhattan. Before: I saw Never Let Me Go and The King’s Speech back-to-back last night. Now there’s no Friday morning press-screening conflict and I’m free and clear to see Black Swan. I ‘m leaving now for Newark and my Toronto flight. (I’m actually past my departure hour.) No more filings until the late afternoon.

Forget the silliness and consider all that beautiful headroom above R. Lee Ermey and Matthew Modine‘s heads. This is the 1.37:1 Full Metal Jacket I know and love and wish I owned on Bluray.

Obama has screwed himself with caution and timidity (he didn’t go far enough with stimulus funding) and allowing the uglies to lead the conversation, but boil the current catastrophes down to basics and it all tracks back to Bush-era excesses and abuses.

So how are Average Joes going to vote in the mid-terms? Simple — they’re going to vote for a Republican majority in Congress, and thereby block any chance of Obama pushing anything through legislatively. They’re going to give more power to those who caused all the problems in the first place (i.e., righties committed to exploiting stupidity and serving the corporations + Tea Party nutters). That’ll fix things, right?

John Curran‘s Stone (Overture, 10.8) is some kind of mind-blower. It really and truly steps outside the box. It serves up moral/spiritual issues and past nightmares and demons and asks you, the viewer, to decide where the real morality and salvation lie.

I spoke to Curran a week or two ago. My audio digicorder was lost at the time so I used my Canon SD1400 camera. In the above clip we talk about Ed Norton, the film’s sexuality, Robert DeNiro, Milla Jovovich, and the challenge facing the Stone marketing team.

There’s a point at which I tell Curran that I’ve turned the camera off, which I really did believe I’d done. I later decided after reviewing it that what Curran said about the selling of Stone was pretty mild stuff, and that we touched on issues that should be heard and discussed, so I left it in. The recording works better with it.

I said in my initial review that Norton’s character “starts out as some kind of scurvy opportunistic convict with a corn-row haircut, but he gradually goes somewhere else. De Niro’s prison counselor seems dull and compromised but half-sympathetic (or at least will eventually seem that way, you’re thinking, once you get to know him) but he, too, goes to an unexpected place. And Jovovich, whom Norton describes early on as a kind of ‘alien’, turns out to be less than that, but is definitely in her own realm.

“And she’s not the character who winds up leaving the planet, so to speak.”

Martin Scorsese and Kent Jones‘ A Letter to Elia, which will play at the Toronto Film Festival, will be shown on PBS’s American Masters series on 10.4, and then appear within an 18-disc Elia Kazan DVD set that 20th Century Fox Home Video will release on 11.9. One of the films in the set, naturally, will be Kazan’s long-missing Viva Zapata (’52).

The 1.78:1 brownshirts who feel Psycho looks better when it’s been top-and-bottom cropped within an inch of its life will perhaps be greatly distressed to learn that Zapata will be mastered at 1.37:1.

This is the most satisfyingly shot and performed poker-playing scene in Hollywood history because it’s not about poker, but about two cheats trying to out-fuck each other. Paul Newman‘s smug and rascally confidence is key, but the whole thing really depends upon Robert Shaw‘s seething rage — the scene wouldn’t play without it. It’s all about boiling blood.

I can watch this all day long and never get bored because it’s perfectly shot, acted, lighted and timed. It’s the kind of thing that big-studio movies used to do really well. The emphasis was just so.

Until last night I’d never seen this grainy copy of a b & w still, obviously taken from a cut scene in John Boorman‘s Deliverance (’72). Apparently a long-after-the-fact scene, or perhaps one of Jon Voight‘s nightmares. The Aintry Sheriff (James Dickey) has found a decomposed body, and has summoned Voight, Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty to identify and explain.

Last night TheWrap‘s Sharon Waxman reported about a seemingly horrific atmosphere at the Hollywood Reporter. The new guys — i.e., the gossipy chip-chippies hired by new honcho Janice Min, formerly of Us magazine — are talking only amongst themselves while the trade-wise old guard are suffering in morose isolation.

“The outward changes at the new Hollywood Reporter have led to an estrangement inside the newsroom between Janice Min and the staff she has brought in, and the veteran journalists who take orders from the newbies and are otherwise ignored,” says Waxman.

“The alienation has become so severe that the legacy staffers have a secret name for the new team: ‘The Others,’ according to several insiders.

“The pre-Min journalists live in a strange purgatory” — Gregg Kilday, we feel your pain! — “where they have little say and less contact with the new team. The painful word from inside the newsroom at THR is that Min (above, left) has little to do with them — doesn’t speak to them, or look people in the eye.”

I’ve been through similar newsroom vibes (such as when I worked at Entertainment Tonight in ’98 under Linda Bell Blue), and there is nothing worse in the entire world that to be on the wrong side of these henhouse dynamics. It’s all about politics and closed doors and Rasputin-like plotting and acute psychological terror. It’s awful.

“As WaxWord has written about recently, Min has started to implement her plan to take THR to a more consumer, celebrity-focused publication.

“Min has not bothered with diplomatic niceties with the staff that was previously in place, and is not winning any friends among them either. (Said one: ‘She didn’t even introduce herself to numerous key people,’ and hasn’t acknowledged them since arriving)

“Min did not respond to emails and two phone messages seeking a response.

“While Elizabeth Guider is still technically the editor, she currently functions as a ‘glorified reporter,’ as one person put it, with no management or editorial decision-making power.

“Instead, all headline and important editorial decisions are made by Min and her team, communicated via email to managing editors Mike Barnes and Todd Cunningham.

“But word is they are looking for a new managing editor, presumably to report to Owen Phillips, the former editor of the Wall Street Journal‘s glossy magazine, who is now Min’s executive editor. Most think that the ME job is likely to go to another former Us Weekly staffer. Min continues to add those people to her team.

“Meanwhile a new Human Resources director, installed by Min, has an office off the newsroom instead of where the administration people sit. Even that executive talks not to colleagues on the floor, but to Min — and gives the strong impression that she’s taking notes about what’s going on around her.”

“Change is tough all around, but the split editorial personality at THR noted by many is apparently borne out in the day-to-day of the newsroom.”

For me, the most enticing short-burst appraisal of Darren Aronofsky‘s Black Swan was penned two days ago by First Showing’s Alex Billington.

Two key portions: (a) “Wow. Now I know who I’m going to be rooting for to win the Best Actress Oscar next year”; and (b) “A brilliant, psychologically intense film that takes the audience on a very operatic thrill ride. I truly believe Aronofsky has outdone himself once again. [He’s] achieved a mesmerizing and utterly brilliant fusion of two performance mediums — theater (specifically ballet) and film in an extraordinary way that…we’ve never seen before.”

Updated, corrected: The first MCN Gurus o’ Gold Best Picture chart was posted last night, and it’s nothing. It’s too early, nobody knows zip — everyone’s hedging or spitballing or opting for safe ground. It’s significant, though, that each and every Guru — Greg Ellwood, Pete Hammond, Peter Howell, Dave Karger, David Poland, Sasha Stone, Kris Tapley, Anne Thompson, Suzie Woz — voted for Tom Hooper‘s newly-arrived The King’s Speech.

Of the top sixteen films — Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King’s Speech, Toy Story 3, The Social Network, Black Swan, True Grit, Another Year, The Fighter, Love and Other Drugs, 127 Hours, Winter’s Bone, How Do You Know, Never Let Me Go, Hereafter, The Tree of Life — eight are looking like possible (but not likely…not yet) soft sisters:

(a) Toy Story 3 — It’s pointless to explain to the Gurus (or to anyone for that matter) that as superb as Toy Story 3 is, predicting that the Academy will nominate it for Best Picture is (a) an acknowledgment of and tribute to its quality as well as a lament about live-action features often coming up short, and (b) is essentially a futile wheel-spinning exercise as it’s probably not going to be Best Picture-nominated, and is all but locked to win the Best Animated Feature Oscar.

(b) How Do You Know/Everything You’ve Got — I’ve been sensing for years that the spirit has been seeping out of James L. Brooks. It would be delightful if he wasn’t “past it” in terms of Oscar-worthy material, but I suspect that he is. He’s not the guy he was in the ’80s and early ’90s. I think he’s aged out. As Good As It Gets was the last time it all seemed to connect in the right way. I don’t think I’m alone is saying that Spanglish was the death knell. Brooks’ apparent inability to decide whether to call his film How Do You Know or Everything You’ve Got obviously indicates a shaky focus.

(c) Winter’s Bone — Never a strong Best Picture contender; the heat has always been with Best Actress contender Jennifer Lawrence.

(d) Hereafter — I’ve read Peter Morgan‘s script, and I’ve considered what Anne Thompson had to say to Kris Tapley about how Hereafter has been playing with the early-looksee crowd. And there’s reason to suspect that it’s not a strike, and that two or three or more pins will be left standing.

(e) Love and Other Drugs — The Ed Zwick factor has indicated from the get-go that this romantic dramedy wouldn’t a hot prospect for Best Picture status. It’s always looked like an Anne Hathaway for Best Actress thing — that’s the only thing I’m half-convinced of.

(f) Another Year — Admired as they always are (and for all the right reasons), Mike Leigh‘s films don’t tend to penetrate the Oscar realm.

(g) Never Let Me Go — Some feel it’s a brilliant masterwork; others are calling it a chilly dispiriting piece about meekly submitting to cruel fate. Indications are that critics and Academy members will continue to express divided opinion.

(h) 127 Hours — The red-arm factor — nausea, aversion — may be a problem down the road, or it may settle down and go away. The Telluride reviews have been very good, but there does seem (key operative term) to be a vulnerability in this regard.

That leaves seven rock-solids — Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King’s Speech, The Social Network, Black Swan, True Grit, The Tree of Life — and a complete unknown with David O. Russell‘s The Fighter. And who’s to say that True Grit is a major Coen Bros. film? They can be rote — they don’t have to be brilliant.

And what about The Tourist, The Conspirator, Biutiful, The Way Back, etc.?