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“Wednesday night’s event seemed less about Mr. Obama’s presidency and more about the state of this country,” N.Y. Times reporter Adam Nagourney wrote a couple of hours ago. “His calls during the campaign for an end to brutal partisanship appeared to carry little weight these past two years in Washington. There is no way to know if his similar call on Wednesday, under tragic circumstances, will have more traction.”

“If I had one wish

One dream I knew would come true

I’d want to speak to all the people of the world

I’d get up there, I’d get up there on that platform

First I’d sing a song or two you know I would

Then I’ll tell you what I’d do

I’d talk to the people and I’d say

‘It’s a rough rough world, it’s a tough tough world

Well, you know

And things don’t always, things don’t always go the way we plan

But there’s one thing, one thing we all have in common

And it’s something everyone can understand

All over the world sing along

“‘I just want you to hurt like I do

I just want you to hurt like I do

I just want you to hurt like I do

Honest I do, honest I do, honest I do'”

Last week Scott Feinberg caught up with Greenberg star (as well as No Strings Attached, Arthur and Damsels in Distress costar/star/whatever) Greta Gerwig, whom I spoke to last month in a small Lower East Side restaurant. Feinberg did a real “interview”; I conducted more of a loose-shoe whatever-happens chit-chat pass-the-salt “hey, I like Phil Spector too” type of encounter.

Lynn Hirschberg‘s exclusive W story about David Fincher‘s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo has several photos of Rooney Mara in Lisbeth Salander mode. Clearly Fincher wanted his Lisbeth to look significantly different than Noomi Rapace‘s version. So he went with short, severe-looking bangs and bleached eyebrows. A little bit of an early ’80s Klaus Nomi look.

Honestly? I’m not entirely sure how I feel about these differences. I liked Rapace’s look, but I recognize that it would have seemed weird if Fincher had given Rooney an exact copycat appearance. Maybe I just need some time to get used to it. But right now I’m getting a little tiny bit of an Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein vibe. Just a slight one. Not the Lanchester look, obviously, but the otherness.

HE is taking exception to the Directors Guild of America having included Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington‘s Restrepo among its 2010 nominees, but not Amir Bar Lev‘s far superior The Tillman Story. The DGA also nominated Last Train Home, Inside Job, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer and Waiting for Superman.

I wrote the following about Restrepo last June in a piece called “Afghanistan Bananastan“:

“The kind of frankness that Restrepo is offering is, to put it mildly, selective. For realism’s sake Restrepo chooses to isolate its audience inside the insular operational mentality of the grunts — ‘get it done,’ ‘fill up more sandbags,’ ‘ours not to reason why’ and so on. In so doing it misleads and distorts in a way that any fair-minded person would and should find infuriating. Is there any other way to describe a decision to keep viewers ignorant about any broader considerations — anything factual or looming in a political/tactical/situational sense — that might impact the fate of the subjects, or their mission?”

In a video message released this morning, the most despicable woman in this country’s political realm said that “journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn.” A believer in American “exceptionalism,” Palin knows perfectly well that she’s been inciting the reactionary ire of under-educated, lower-income rurals for over two years, and has done plenty to feed the hate fires.

“Caution is not part of Ms. Palin’s political repertory,” writes N.Y. Times blogger Michael D. Shear. “She starts the video with the standard expressions of condolences to the victims of the shootings. But her demeanor quickly shifts into a more aggressive posture.

“The video is laden with references that will appeal to her potential supporters. In addition to talking about the country’s ‘foundational freedoms’ and the intentions of the nation’s founders, and referring to Reagan, she twice calls the United States ‘exceptional,’ a dig at Mr. Obama, whom conservatives accuse of not believing in the concept of’ ‘American exceptionalism’ because of his answer to a reporter’s question early in his presidency.

“‘Public discourse and debate isn’t a sign of crisis, but of our enduring strength,’ she says. “It is part of why America is exceptional.'”

“Whether it was her intention or not today, she is feeding the beast of what has really been a pretty nasty ideological finger-pointing fight that we have been watching on Twitter and the Internet and on some forms of cable television,” NBC News’ Chuck Todd reportedly said on MSNBC.

“There was some sympathy for Palin over being tied to shooting, [and] she chose to go inflammatory,” The Daily Beast‘s Howard Kurtz wrote via Twitter.

The Green Hornet (Sony, 1.14) is a blend of superhero sludge and a buddy action comedy. Except the action has no juice — you’ve seen the same duke-out, shoot-out, car-chase, demolition-derby stuff hundreds of times — and it’s not the least bit funny, largely because it won’t stop hitting you with the same old routines. What you get is unimaginative, routinely-staged action. The appalling use of decades-old cliches. Boring and/or tediously-drawn characters. Painful GenX-wanker dialogue that feels half-trite and half-improvised. And not even faint amusement.

It’s a co-creation of actor-producer-screenwriter Seth Rogen, co-writer Evan Goldberg, director Michel Gondry, and everyone else who tried to make this into a film, going back to the ’90s.

This is one of those big movies that make you feel as if you’re being poisoned. You sit in your seat feeling like Alexander Litvinenko succumbing to radioactive polonium-210. This is what corporate entertainment has become in the 21st Century — a kind of death-trip experience. Most of the time you sit and think about “the end” and what that’ll be like, and the rest of the time you sit up and pay attention to the dialogue in order to follow the plot.

What a shock that Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Human Nature, The Science of Sleep), a signature director with a recognizable aesthetic, decided to whore out with this thing.

The irony, of course, is that The Green Hornet is as old as fish fossils. The basic bones — irresponsible newspaper heir Britt Reid (Rogen) and trusted chauffeur Kato (Jay Chou) becoming an urban crime-fighting team — were originally created for a 1930s radio serial. So it’s the last classic superhero tale to reach the big screen, it took forever to get made, and it’s basically a big 3D shit sandwich.

Some of the geek critics are calling it “one of the better superhero flicks of recent years,” “sly, silly, thrilling,” and “a surprisingly funny and ingeniously clever take,” etc. If you want to believe that, go right ahead.

I went into this thing believing that Rogen is a cool actor-writer with good humor instincts, and I came out of it wondering what’s happened to the poor guy, and how could he have been part of something like this? I know that poor Christoph Waltz, last year’s Best Supporting Actor winner for Inglourious Basterds, has diminished his rep by playing a drug-dealing bad guy in the usual “My God, I’m so evil I can’t help but joke about it” deadpan-shrug sort of way. (Why does the winning of Oscars always seem to lead to stupid paycheck roles, and the eventual ruining of careers when the actor/actress accepts too many of them?) I don’t know why Cameron Diaz is in this thing, but she is, playing a peripheral sex-tease character.

One of the reasons The Green Hornet cost $130 million is that “the production modified 29 Chrysler Imperials from model years 1964 to 1966 to portray the Green Hornet’s luxurious supercar, the Black Beauty,” according to a May 2010 N.Y. Times story. They couldn’t have made do with ten?

Chou’s Kato is an unquestionably cooler dude than Rogen’s Reid. Even in his stoner modes Rogen has always played reasonably bright fellows, but he seems borderline retarded in this outing. Reid has trouble thinking or saying anything above the level of “this coffee sucks.” On top of which he’s a spoiled, immature blowhard. He’s genuinely annoying. But Chou is cool and contained and the brains of the partnership. I liked him, and didn’t care for big-mouth Rogen dismissing or putting him down. I muttered, “You should take orders from Kato, bitch!”

I mentioned yesterday that I cooked up a metaphor in my theatre seat about Chou representing the more dynamic and forward-moving Asian economies of 2010 and Rogen representing the smug, flatulent and coasting-on-past-glories U.S. economy.

I’ve said time and again that outside of the Chris Nolan realm, the comic-book superhero genre is a plague and a pox upon our cinematic house. And I’ve explained the reasons until blue in the face. It’s gone way beyond the milking-to-death of the empowerment-through-transformation fantasy (lonely, morose compromised guy finds potency through costumed crime-fighting alter-ego). You might as well call the constant re-packaging and re-selling of this sad little dream by corporate-funded movie studios a malevolent Orwellian scheme. You have no power, suckers, and we want it kept that way so here’s some more heroin to distract you from the facts.

To me there’s nothing sadder than the eagerness of the ComicCon culture to pay to see the same thing (okay, with slight variations in terms of identities, costumes, villains, CG and the usual crash-boom-bang) in film after film, year after year. They have no shame, and there’s no talking to them about this. Their comic-book and gamer appetites, instilled during their late ’60s, ’70s and ’80s childhoods, are like serum in their souls. To me the relentlessness of superhero films has become a kind of mass poison.

In his review of this Michel Gondry film, Hitfix‘s Drew McWeeny writes that it “seems like filmgoers don’t mind [the oppressive sameness] because they continually go see [these] films without major complaint.” Exactly. This is why I’ve floated the idea of F14 Tomcats strafing the ComicCon faithful outside the San Diego Convention Center. They have their fantasies; I have mine.

I had a nice time, snapped a few shots and enjoyed the company of, I felt, some of the coolest and/or most interesting people on the planet at today’s Social Network luncheon at the Four Seasons. The filmmakers, as you might expect, were in an amiable and settled mood. Not the least bit assuming or presumptuous but…well, you could certainly say comfortable.

True Grit‘s Hailee Steinfeld, Social Network‘s Andrew Garfield — Tuesday, 1.11, 12:55 pm.

Sony Pictures honcho Amy Pascal.

Social Network producer Dana Brunetti, Jesse Eisenberg, producer Mike DeLuca — Tuesday, 1.11, 2:10 pm.

Social Network producer Scott Rudin.

Armie Hammer (i.e., portrayer of Winklevii) and engaging wife, whose name I will retrieve sometime this evening.

I sat to the left of Social Network screenwriter Aaron Sorkin at today’s Four Seasons luncheon on behalf of Sorkin, David Fincher and Scott Rudin‘s film. Screenwriter Stephen Schiff was three seats away, director-screenwriter James Toback sat to his right, and Sony production executive Elizabeth Cantillon sat opposite. I don’t know why I’m discussing table seatings.

And then it was time for Sony production chief Amy Pascal, who hosted the luncheon, to deliver remarks, and then for Sorkin to say a few words.

Before this happened we talked about (a) what Sorkin described as an unfunny, overly prolonged run of snippy, somewhat defensive comments from critic Armond White at last night’s New York Film Critics Circle ceremony following Darren Aronofsky’s opening salvo; (b) the deep awfulness of The Green Hornet (entirely me talking, him listening), (c) the Green Hornet metaphor I created in my head about Jay Chou‘s Kato representing the more dynamic and forward-moving Asian economies and Seth Rogen’s Britt Reid representing the smug, flatulent and coasting-on-past-glories U.S. economy, and Sorkin being intrigued by this and asking if this metaphor is in the film, and my saying “no, I just thought it up during my agonizing experience of watching,” (d) Arizona and that fruitcake snap of the Jackie Coogan-ish shooter.

At today’s Social Network luncheon longtime 007 inheritor caretaker producer Barbara Broccoli (daughter of the late Albert “Cubby” Broccoli) was talking to Forbes contributor Bill McCuddy about the imminent announcement of her new James Bond film, which is actually a relaunch of that Sam Mendes version that stalled when MGM’s finances went south. “Cool,” McCuddy said, “I’d like to report that.” No, no…too soon, she replied. Tomorrow. Ten minutes after hearing this story I get out the iPhone and Variety and The Wrap have it bannered.

Paramount Home Video will release a two-disc Bluray of Cecil B. DeMille‘s The Ten Commandments on 3.29. This is hardly an important event from any kind of classic-film standpoint. Almost everything about Commandments is labored or hammy or campy. Much of it groans. But Commandments, shot almost entirely on sound stages, has the potential to look extra cool on Bluray. It’s a large-format VistaVision ’50s film, of course, shot on Kodak 5248. So I’m expecting something richly colored and highly detailed and….shiny?

I mentioned the “s” word because apparently there’s a monk concern that Paramount’s Bluray might appear be “overly DNR’ed” – i.e., given the Spartacus/Patton digital noise reduction treatment to some degree. Maybe. But that’s almost good news for people who get it but don’t it — peons with 42-inch plasmas like myself. My brain understands and agrees that a Bluray should look like “film”, but my heart wants what it wants when I see something crisp and luminous and sharper than before. Put me in jail.