I can’t explain how or why I find the substitute song track in this scene from The Apartment oddly hilarious, but I really do. On top of which it’s perfectly mixed in (just the right sound levels, cuts out at the right instant) and it doesn’t get in the way of what’s going on in the scene.

Congrats to the Weinstein Co. marketers for yesterday’s Inglourious Basterds haul of $14,350,000, which will probably translate into a $35 million weekend haul by Sunday night. Unless, of course, Saturday’s business suffers a sharp drop. Which could happen if the Joe Popcorn-Eloi reactions are similar to what a significant portion of the critics have said. But if it hangs in there, great. The Weinsteins will have earned themselves a breather. Nobody wants the Weinsteins to go away.

There were two things different about last night’s 3D IMAX previews compared to the San Diego/ComicCon footage shown last month. The reel I saw here was, of course, shorter — 15 or 16 minutes compared to 24 minutes in San Diego — and the ending has a hurried montage ofAvatar‘s second half (the clash between Stephen Lang‘s military commandos and the Na’vi with Sam Worthington‘s Na’vi hybrid sure to take sides against his own). But there was another distinction. Actually a distraction.

The Avatar footage, projected onto the huge IMAX screen inside Leows Lincoln Square, wasn’t quite as vivid and needle-sharp looking as the 3D San Diego reel. And yet LLS projects “real” IMAX (i.e., on super-sized film) vs. the digital “fake” IMAX-on-smaller-screens that other NYC theatres were showing. What gives? My semi-educated guess is that Avatar looks better with digital projection since it’s been an all-digital show from shooting to FX to post. Transferring to film (even IMAX film) just degrades. I know that what I saw wasn’t as on-the-money so what other conclusion could there be?

Beyond this I was feeling a little Avatar-ed out after it ended. I walked out saying to myself, “Hmmm….no bump-up. Same as before only less so.” Obviously because of the tech/focus issue but also because an Avatar visual highlights reel (i.e, the Na’vi/jungle monster/flying reptile-bird whoa stuff aimed at 12 year-olds) only takes you so far. It doesn’t wear well the second time. I need story, soul, structure, music, wit, great acting, etc.

Why does Worthington’s Jake Sully, a paraplegic military guy, act like an incorrigible 13 year-old when he wakes up from his Na’vi transformation operation and finds himself 10 feet tall and full of energy with two good legs? He didn’t anticipate that it would be a huge shock to suddenly find himself able to walk around? The laboratory authorities didn’t talk to him about adjusting before he went under? It’s kind of stupid that he just gets up and goes “this is really cool!” and lumbers out of the recovery room with the physicians warning him to stay put or else. I didn’t believe it. It felt bullshitty.

Plus the CG of his backside (including a tail) as he leaves the room looks too cartoony.

Down on Pandora the second monster (i.e., the big black one Scully is told to definitely run from) is right on top of him during the chase sequence. Why do big scary predators have to be within a step or two of their prey all the time? Why does every movie chase have to be so skin-of-our-teeth close? It gets old. Plus the monster moves so fast that his moves blurred out for me. My eyes couldn’t follow each and every whip-snap movement.

Paramount standee on second floor of Leows’ Lincoln Square — Friday, 8.21, 8:35 pm.

And how does it work exactly that Zoe Saldana‘s Na’vi character — a strong, fierce-eyed warrior named Neytiri — can speak English? She’s a Pandora native whose fellow Na’vi tribesmen speak in their native tongue with subtitles, so I don’t get it. I’m sure it’ll be explained down the road but it was one more thing to scratch my head about.

The 8 pm show was maybe 25% full, if that. A female Leows usher screwed things up in the early stages, telling people who showed their print-outs (like me) to go straight up to the fourth floor without telling them to get their orange wristbands from the Avatar/Fox guys on the main level. So a lot of us went up to the fourth floor only to be told to go all the way back down again.

I’m just going to take an Avatar break in my head until they start showing the full-length film to press sometime in November or whenever.

Okay, DVD Beaver has convinced me. Paramount’s upcoming Sapphire Series Blu-ray of Mel Gibson‘s Braveheart (out on 9.1) is a knockout. The DVD vs. Blu-ray frame-capture comparisons make this clear. The problem…I don’t know that this actually is a problem, now that I think of it…is that I’m not sure I want to watch Braveheart again.

DVD Beaver frame-capture of new Paramount Home Video Blu-ray of Mel Gibson’s

Seeing it once 14 years ago may have been sufficient, I mean. I don’t think I can take watching Gibson yell “freedohhm!” again. I’d watch a bootleg DVD of him saying “sugar tits” to that Malibu sheriff — that I’d pay to see.

“Power is not a toy we give to good children. It is a weapon. And the strong man takes it and uses it. And the man who doesn’t use it has no business in the big league. Because if you don’t fight, the Presidency is not for you. And it never will be.” Tough words that arguably apply to President Barack Obama in light of his apparent “knee buckling” on public option health care and trying to “nice” the Republicans into being cooperative and bipartisan.

The tough words are from Franklin Schaffner‘s film version of Gore Vidal‘s The Best Man. The speaker is President Art Hockstater (Lee Tracy), who’s trying to wake up the brilliant and charming but just-not-scrappy-enough presidential contender William Russell (Henry Fonda). If you haven’t seen this 1964 film (which isn’t on DVD), do so. The parallels between Obama and Russell are immediately apparent.

The more I think about public option going down the drain, the angrier I get at the wildebeest card-holders in the U.S. Senate who are standing foursquare against it, but I’m also feeling angrier and angrier at Obama for…I don’t know, radiating that irritating Zen placidity thing he does and, to go by impressions I’ve been getting, not playing this as toughly and shrewdly as he could. Don’t ask me for particulars because I can’t name them, but my Paul Krugman-fed impression — hell, everyone’s impression — is that Obama isn’t being sufficiently tooth-and-nail on this thing. Sometimes you have to be hard. There comes a time when you have to use muscle and twist the screws.

What did Arianna Huffington say about Obama on Charlie Rose two days ago (i.e., Thursday night)? That he’s too much into compromising and “a little delusional” and lacking a willingness to fight? Another thing Huffington said gave me the willies because it confirms what I’ve been fearing all along: “Temperamentally [Obama] doesn’t like confrontation.” Oh, to have a little Lyndon Johnson-style arm-twisting, horse-trading, brow-beating and old-fashioned threatening going on right now!

As Counterpunch‘s Michael Green has written (and I’m quoting him without endorsing his view that Obama is a “terrible president”), “Does this guy who seems to want, more than anything, for everyone just to be happy and sing along in the same key, still really believe in bipartisanship, at the very moment when the very people with whom he is negotiating are reinforcing the most absurd and inflammatory lies asserting the elder-cide intentions of his health-care bill?”

As I explained earlier today in a talkback forum, Joe Popcorn is a different guy than Joe Sixpack. The latter is a cultural figure who responds to various hot-button issues in the political realm. They know each other, live in the same neck, park their cars in the same garage. Except Joe Popcorn is a kind of older movie-buff who sees movies once every two or three weeks.

His movie-love, granted, is defined by a limited attitude and education (having never watched films like L’avventura or The Hit or Office Space or Martin Scorsese‘s American Boy) and diminished/conventional spiritual vistas. But that’s our Joe.

JP tends to stick to easily-digestible, heavily advertised, broadly-commercial fare. I call him “older” in the sense that he’s not one of the Eloi, which is an under-25 kneejerk moviegoing culture that always attends the latest big-studio idiot flick, no matter how godawful or how wretched the online buzz, out of feelings of basic peer pressure and needing/wanting to hang with their yo-homies on Friday and Saturday night, etc.

“There’s a point at which realism shades over into weakness, and progressives increasingly feel that the administration is on the wrong side of that line,” N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote yesterday for a piece in today’s issue. “It seems as if there is nothing Republicans can do that will draw an administration rebuke: Senator Charles E. Grassley feeds the death panel smear, warning that reform will ‘pull the plug on grandma,’ and two days later the White House declares that it’s still committed to working with him.

“It’s hard to avoid the sense that President Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled.

Indeed, no sooner were there reports that the administration might accept co-ops as an
alternative to the public option than G.O.P. leaders announced that co-ops, too, were
unacceptable.

“So progressives are now in revolt. Mr. Obama took their trust for granted, and in the process lost it. And now he needs to win it back.”

I am one of those lefties feeling punked and in a revolting mood. You can’t treat right-wing politicians like human beings unless…oh, you know, unless one of their wives has died or if they’ve been caught cheating or something. Otherwise you have to frown up and treat them like animals, like evil dogs. You have to push them into a corner and bark back at them and get out the stick and let them know you won’t take any of their shit or you’ll whack them even harder. You have to make their lives a living hell. Only then will they respect you and deal with you.

You think I’m kidding?

Okay, I have to hit town for my Avatar encounter at Leows Lincoln Square. I’m told that the AMC IMAX on 42nd Street is fake IMAX, as are all the other IMAX theatres in town except for the AMC Lincoln Square. Repeating: this is the only Manhattan theatre showing the footage in genuine 3D IMAX. Simulated IMAX is like going to the Venetian in Las Vegas and saying afterwards, “Well, I’ve been to Venice. Love the people and the food. Love those gondolas!”

A Back by Midnight chit-chat with Tyson director James Toback.

“There’s a real question at stake now,” Jon Voight has told the Washington Times. “Is President Obama creating a civil war in our own country? We are witnessing a slow, steady takeover of our true freedoms. We are becoming a socialist nation, and whoever can’t see this is probably hoping it isn’t true. If we permit Mr. Obama to take over all our industries, if we permit him to raise our taxes to support unconstitutional causes, then we will be in default. This great America will become a paralyzed nation.”

Here are a few Twitter messages from Yair Raveh‘s Twitter page about the now-concluded Avatar-reel screenings in Tel Aviv. Same old snarky/bitter fanboy stuff.

There are three reasons why Michael Moore‘s docs connect with people. One, they always exude a kind of working-class, regular-fat-guy, American common-sense attitude about whatever the subject is. Two, they’re always mildly funny or amusing but in a way that pushes along the investigative/rhetorical thrust. And three, they always end with some kind of emotional touchstone moment.

I’m sure this will all kicks in with Capitalism: A Love Story, but my first reaction to this trailer was “haven’t we seen Moore dealing with security guys while trying to confront corporate bigwigs a few times before?” It feels a little tired, is all. A little rote.