An HE correspondent says he’s been “getting reports from theatre managers that many people are choosing to see Sherlock Holmes only after finding Avatar to be sold out.” How would Holmes be doing on its own, without the Avatar feed-through? I wonder. Avatar pays off — Holmes is a burn.

Avatar grossed $19.4 million yesterday (Monday, 12.28) for a cume of $232 million. It made $16 million last Monday. Exceptional, phenomenal, historic.

We all know about the supposed relationship between box-office earnings and being nominated for Best Picture (i.e., not enough dough = forget it), but Pete Hammond has amended this thinking in a passage from his 12.28 Envelope/Notes on a Season column.

Director-screenwriter Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Gods and Monsters), who co-produced last year’s Academy Awards show, tells Hammond that “voters are more understanding” when it comes to low-earners like The Hurt Locker.

Kathryn Bigelow‘s film cost $11 million to make and has taken in a bit more than $12 million, but “I think the Academy is a lot more likely to forgive a movie like The Hurt Locker for its lack of big box office since they admire it and know it didn’t cost a lot to make in the first place,” Condon says.

Hammond seems to agree when he writes that “history shows the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences ‘& Money,’ as Mel Brooks once put it, is far more likely to deny Oscar glory to movies that cost a lot and turn out to be big box-office losers.”

In other words (and I hate to say this for Harvey Weinstein‘s sake), Nine?

In a 12.28 piece that attempts to explain the low-tech tabulating process that determines Oscar nominations, The Wrap‘s Steve Pond says the following about the Best Picture nomination process: “You’re listing 10 films on your ballot, but you’re only actually voting for one. Your ballot gives you a single vote, which goes to a single film. And if a movie’s not ranked number one on somebody’s ballot, it’s out.”

Pond also points out that “the magic number for a Best Picture nomination is 501,” based on (a) the goal of 10 nominations, (b) having started with 5,500 Best Picture ballots and (c) dividing 5,500 by 11, giving you a magic number of 500.

I think I understand this, but maybe I don’t. To a guy who’s always had trouble with numbers, this seems to mean that if Precious doesn’t end up with 501 Academy members (i.e., one tenth of the membership plus one) listing it as their top Best Picture choice, it won’t emerge as one of the ten finalists. And if this doesn’t happen, Mo’Nique‘s chances of winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar…naah, she’ll win regardless. I know when I’m beaten.

One result of this system, says Pond, “is that the number of films contending for the 10 Best Picture nominations will actually be no larger than the number that would have been contending for five.” Wait…what?

Movie City News, he explains, “is now compiling all the critics’ top 10 lists for the year. As of this weekend, they had 54 lists, which mentioned a total of 104 different films. But only 21 of those films were ranked number one on the ballots — so if those lists were tabulated using the preferential system, those 21 films would be in the running and the other 83 would be immediately eliminated.”

I’m still having trouble with the 501 thing. It’s theoretically possible that Avatar, The Hurt Locker and Up In The Air might be listed as the #1 Best Picture choice on, let’s say, 4500 Academy ballots. That would mean that remaining choices on these 4500 ballots won’t mean squat, right? That would leave 1000 more ballots from which seven other Best Picture nominees would need to be chosen. This means that these seven would have to appear as #1 Best Picture choices on only 142 ballots…right?

No, it’s not right. A little voice is telling me this, and to hell with it. I don’t want to understand the math. I’ve never wanted to. I used to fail math quizzes when I was a teenager.

On page 84 of Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America (Simon & Schuster, 1.12.10), author Peter Biskind summarizes Beatty’s thinking about the character who eventually became George Roundy, the scampy hairdresser in Shampoo.

Freudian analyses had a certain currency in the ’60s and ’70s, and, as Beatty puts it, “I wanted to challenge the fashionable assumption that the proverbial Don Juan figure is expressing self-hatred, self-love, hatred of women, homosexuality, sadism, masochism, a wish for eternal life and so on.”

“Beatty never thought about himself as someone who was inordinately interested in sex, obsessed or addicted to it in any way,” Biskind explains. “His attitude was, it’s perfectly normal, and society was too puritanical to accept it. And indeed, if you looked like him and were gifted with the talent for seduction that was his, why not? He did it because he could, thank you very much, Dr. Freud!”

The holiday doldrums — 12.25 through 1.2.10 — are upon us now. This may seem like a good thing from an impulsive-adventure perspective (read two books, drive to Vermont, fly to London, walk into the city), but I was outside this morning and it’s 22 degrees (and feels like 4, according to weather.com). So I suppose I’ll go with the reading. If only Criterion’s Che Bluray was obtainable…

Marshall Fine‘s Best of the Decade list reminded me of two I should included in my own — Pedro Almodovar‘s Volver and Errol Morris‘ The Fog of War. Wait a minute…Kill Bill? And The Hours?

I made a mistake running my Best of the Decade piece back in early October. It got 109 comments, but I still don’t think many people were thinking sum-ups at the time. Since then every critic and blogger on the planet has posted a best-of-decader, of course. So I may as well post mine again only with four extra titles [UPDATED] — James Cameron‘s Avatar, Michael Mann‘s Collateral, Pedro Almodovar‘s Volver and Joel and Ethan Coen‘s A Serious Man — for a total of 42. The top ten are obviously indicated so if that’s what you’re looking for…

In order of preference: (1) Zodiac, (2) Memento, (3) Traffic, (4) Amores perros, (5) United 93, (6) Children of Men, (7) Adaptation, (8) City of God, (9) The Pianist, (10) The Lives of Others, (11) Sexy Beast, (12) Avatar, (13) There Will Be Blood, (14) Michael Clayton, (15) Almost Famous ( the “Untitled” DVD director’s cut), (16) 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, (17) Collateral, (18) Dancer in the Dark, (19) A Serious Man, (20) Girlfight, (21) The Departed, (22) Babel, (23) Ghost World, (24) In the Bedroom, (25) Talk to Her, (26) Bloody Sunday, (27) No Country For Old Men, (28) The Quiet American, (29) Whale Rider, (30) Road to Perdition, (31) Open Range, (32) Touching the Void, (33) Maria Full of Grace, (34) Up In The Air, (35) The Hurt Locker, (36) Million Dollar Baby, (37) The Motorcycle Diaries, (38) An Education, (39) Man on Wire, (40) Revolutionary Road, (41) Che.and (42) Volver.

Besides being a great headline in the tradition of ‘Headless Body in Topless bar,’ it also turns down the terror factor by making the underwear bomber a figure of foolery.

Who in their right minds would want to watch, let alone Netflix or buy, the forthcoming Bluray of John Wayne‘s The Green Berets when it streets on 1.10.10? The only star-fortified Hollywood film that was wholly supportive of the U.S.war effort in Vietnam, The Green Berets (directed by Wayne and released in July 1968) became legendary for its ludicrousness — a turgid propaganda film that screamed “reality detachment!” at every turn.

It’s set in Vietnam, of course, and is basically about a special Green Beret mission to capture a North Vietnamese general. (Or so I recall.) It feels informed by 1950s war movie cliches — totally divorced from the raggedy look and feel of the war as portrayed by Oliver Stone in Platoon, and not even imagining, much less trying for, the operatic psychedelia that Francis Coppola brought to Apocalypse Now. It is, however, a dream — a dream taking place in John Wayne’s head. It’s one of Roger Ebert‘s most-hated flicks — a “heavy-handed, remarkably old-fashioned film,” he wrote.

There are no Platoon-type lefties or complainers or pot-smokers in the Green Beret ranks, of course. We’re talking serious commandos who don’t fool around, which means no Willem Dafoe-ish Jesus-type sergeants either. All of the American good guys (including Wayne, Jim Hutton, Bruce Cabot and Aldo Ray) are older, beefier, sentimental, right-minded lunks who love Vietnamese kids and energetically dispense medicine to the peasants. The only lefty is an anti-war journalist, played by David Janseen, although he comes around during the third act.

Nothing seems remotely authentic in The Green Berets. The gulps and wrongos and what-the-fuckos come fast and furious. Because Wayne filmed it in Fort Benning, Georgia, there are white birch and pine trees in the Vietnam jungle. And the Asian-American actors Wayne hired to play South Vietnamese military intelligence advisors don’t look even a bit Vietnamese. (They represent a midway point between actual Vietnamese and Marlon Brando ‘s Sakini in Teahouse of the August Moon) I recall a line in Pauline Kael‘s review about how the North Vietnamese general “mews” like a kitten when Wayne’s team takes him prisoner. (Which happens just before he’s about to have his way with a slinky Asian hottie inside a plantation villa.) Really, it’s one hoot after another.

So again, honestly — who would want to spend two hours with this thing? Is someone at Warner Home Video trying to get people thinking about what a certain-to-fail fiasco our Afghanistan mission is?

DVD Beaver’s Gary Tooze has recounted the film’s troubled production and distribution history:

“Long before box office or critical response became a factor, Wayne had different worries prior to production. He needed some of the resources of the Pentagon to make his film as realistic as possible, but the military brass at the Pentagon were no fans of the 1965 national bestseller on which the movie was based. Robin Moore‘s collection of short stories called ‘The Green Berets‘ portrayed the crack commando unit as lawless, sadistic, and racist. Moore, who plays a cameo in the film and claimed to have trained as a Green Beret, stated that these attributes were the signs of ‘real men.’

“A feature-length, big budget movie that was to be based on such a depiction of the American military elite made the Pentagon quite nervous. Naturally, Pentagon officials demanded changes to the script before Wayne and company were granted access to Fort Benning, Georgia, with all its modern hardware at their disposal.

“These conflicts in pre-production, as well as normal shooting delays, hampered the film’s release until July, 1968, a full six months after the Communists’ Tet Offensive, which was the beginning of the end for an American victory in Vietnam. The delayed release proved unfortunate since The Green Berets arrived on the heels of the notorious My Lai massacre in March, 1968, an incident which seriously undermined the film’s credibility.”

Stuart Heisler‘s I Died A Thousand Times, a 1955 remake of Raoul Walsh‘s High Sierra, doesn’t have much of a rep, but it has a great florid title. The forthcoming release of the DVD, in any event, triggered an idea for two lists — movies with great-sounding titles that made for difficult viewing, and excellent or very good films that were stuck with lousy titles.

Most good films are released with decent appealing titles. But every so often a title will come along that’s exceptionally stirring, flat, dull, catchy or off-putting, and which also argues with the quality of the film, be it high or low.

Snakes on a Plane — great title, shitty film. I Dismember Mama — classic title used for exploitation sludge. Bedtime for Bonzo is actually fairly brilliant. Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot must have sounded good before the film was seen. The Human Stain was a mildly underwhelming drama with a title that sounded like a description of semen on the bedsheets. Ishtar was a misbegotten but half-decent comedy, but had a terrible title.

I realize that today’s audience doesn’t like titles that aren’t plain and hot-dog simple, but there’s something wrong with you if you don’t enjoy titles that sound like they came off a pulp paperback. I Died A Thousand Times is one of those noirish, dark-fate titles like Out of The Past, His Kind of Woman, Let No Man Write My Epitaph and O Lord, Please Don’t Let Me be Misunderstood.

After complaining about the murky image projected during last evening’s Sherlock Homes showing at the Regal Union Square Stadium 14, HE reader Gordon 27 replied that the RUSS “is the worst chain theater in NYC…everything they do nickel-and-dimes their customers, right down to the weak lamps in the projectors.” He acknowledged that “every chain does this to some extent” but claimed that the RUSS is far guiltier than most.

Does this plex deserve the ugly crown? Opinions, refutations, further indictments, etc.

The RUSS is probably the worst I’ve ever been to in my life — worse than the AMC Empire on 42nd Street. The projection and sound levels are substandard, to put it gently. The rows don’t allow for sufficient leg room. The seats are too small. And the people who attend are largely riff-raff. Partly retirement-age Jews, partly screaming kids, partly nice couples, partly street homies, partly middle-aged, sullen-faced X-factor types, and partly wild African dogs from the Serenghetti, shouting and roaming around and eyeballing and “hey yo”-ing each other and carrying massive buckets of popcorn and super-sized cokes sloshing over the rim and onto the carpet and plastic floors…and I’m paying money to experience this?

If my only choice was to watch films at the Regal Union Square Stadium 14 or wait three or four months for DVD, I wouldn’t even think about it. Going to a place like this is torture. As soon as you walk in you’re thinking, “I’ve gotta get outta here.”

Perhaps we could take this opportunity to list the other exceptionally awful theatres in NY, LA and other burghs. Maybe we can come up with a top ten list of some kind.