Update: The opening eIght minutes from The Hurt Locker appeared this morning on Trailer Addict. I for one thought it was a brilliant ploy on Summit’s part to help people understand what the film is like and get them into it. Then a columnist friend informed that the clip was “siphoned off the servers of either Summit or Hulu, where it was supposed to premiere. It’s straight-up scumbag piracy. I’m hoping you’ll take it down so that people stop giving that pirate site traffic.” And I was about to when I realized the footage itself had been removed. I still say that that eight-minute clip was enticing.

It’s not widely disputed that the classic femme fatale character, first evident in 1940s film noir and later revived in various Halloween-styled slasher pics and high-school satires like Heathers, stems from male fear/resentment of female erotic power. It’s a sexist construction, in short. Even if you cloak it in fang-toothed female revenge and empowerment-gone-wild, it’s basically the same old Lucretia McEvil game.

Karyn Kusama‘s Jennifer’s Body (20th Century Fox, 9.18), a darkly comedic, intensely erotic horror film written by Diablo Cody, is about a teenage cheerleader (Megan Fox), screwed over by a visiting rock band, who turns into a sexual predator and goes on a guy-eating rampage. It’s clever but still a femme fatale thing playing to an age-old psychology. Hello, Jane Greer!

Jennifer’s Body will make a lot of money, of course, because of the exceptional Cody dialogue (“No, I mean actually evil, not high-school evil”) paired with Megan Fox‘s depiction of rabid vampire sexuality. Can’t miss. Here’s a video chat with Cody by the Dish Rag‘s Elizabeth Snead.

If it’s a choice this weekend between Sacha Baron Cohen‘s Bruno and Lynn Shelton‘s Humpday, critic/columnist Marshall Fine is recommending the latter. “The wonderfully funny Humpday, a comedy about the denial of homosexual panic, is being released the same day as Bruno, a comedy about a homosexual causing a panic,” he writes. “The two would make a hilarious double feature, but see Humpday first.

“First of all, Humpday is, strictly speaking, a far better film, with a script, a plot and interestingly developed characters. It’s a movie in which you can make an emotional investment that pays dividends by the time it’s over. (I’m not dismissing Bruno by any means — it’s wildly funny.)

“Secondly, Humpdayis a micro-budget indie that needs your attention far more than Bruno, whose advertising budget alone could finance a couple dozen Humpdays.”

Wells interjection: Urging people to see a poor film before a rich film for reasons of financial compassion cuts no ice with Joe Popcorn. When Joe and his girlfriend hear “poor film” they think “shitty looking, bad sound, possible Netflix down the road,” etc. When they go to a movie they want a nice luxurious movie-bath experience — a certain “extra emphasis/over the rainbow” quality that takes them out of the hellhole of their own heads. Humpday is well-lighted and looks just fine — no key lighting around Josh Leonard or Mark Duplass‘s heads, but a thoroughly professional-looking film. Just want to make that clear.

“Part of the humor comes from the way [Duplass and Leonard] mentally wrestle with the idea of having sex with each other — and deny to themselves that it in any way repulses them. They’re both open-minded adults; it’s just an experience. No judgment. But there are also a lot of laughs in the way Ben contorts himself so as not to disappoint Andrew, while, at the same time, not letting Anna see that he’s unleashed his inner fratboy — or even that the inner fratboy still exists.

“Duplass, with his massive head and slight bluster, is delightfully vulnerable: just a guy who’s trying to recapture a little of the fun of his youth without jeopardizing a life he loves. He’s a man who hasn’t quite rid himself of a kid’s impulses – and is easy prey for the manipulations of Andrew. Leonard has the engagingly laidback quality of a guy who usually gets what he wants because he knows how to play everyone around him. And Alycia Delmore, who plays Duplass’s wife, is perfect as the one person able to resist Josh’s charms.

“With its easy-going pacing and consistently funny give-and-take, Humpday is more than just a one-joke movie. It’s a perceptive comedy about masculinity in which men discover just what being a man can really mean.

Here again is my recent chat with Duplass and Leonard (“Don’t Knock The Hump“).

And here again is my assessment of Leonard, to wit: “Leonard is developmentally arrested (stuck in his early to mid 20s) but he has this smooth buttery seductiveness and a lot of mirth and b.s. and oozy charm. He also seems compulsively, naturally honest. His character is that way, I mean, but Leonard himself seems to have a kind of unpretentious natural-dude thing going on. He’s a little like Owen Wilson, only warmer.”

In the wake of Sarah Palin‘s resignation announcement last Friday — “I quit, this job involves too much difficulty and conflict, I want those lower-48 bucks while the getting is good” — she explained that her family was behind her four-square. “In response to asking, ‘Hey, you want me to make a positive difference and fight for all our children’s future from outside the governor’s office?’ It was four yeses and one ‘Hell, yeah!” And the ‘Hell, yeah’ sealed it,” she said.

In other words, no one in her family — not husband Todd and not children Track, Bristol, Willow and Piper (with one-year-old Trigg abstaining due to age and other issues) — said to her, “Get the contracts from Fox and the speaking engagements — hell yeah, go for it — but what about seeing your electoral responsibility through to the end of your term? Your approval ratings are down and everyone’s ganging up on you, but you don’t want to be called a quitter. This speaks to character. If you want to walk away, fine, but walk away clean.”

Nope — no one said this. Her kids all said, “Yeah, mom — pocket those Fox bucks! Get that nighttime talk show, grab those speaking fees, the hell with finishing your term and screw the responsibility.” This in itself exposes the ethical malignancy of the Palins (and Palinism) for all to see.

This also encapsulates the Great Spiritual Cancer of the Republican entrepenurial middle class in this country. Their lives are so completely geared to making money and cashing in that when the iron is hot, they can only see the iron. Rake it in and worry about ethics and character later on, if ever.

Former Defense Secretary, ex-World Bank chief and Fog of War subject/star Robert S. McNamara, 93, has died and pushed off. Sails are up, hand on the tiller, into the infinite sea. Hello Jack, Jackie, Lyndon, Dean, Senators Church and Fulbright, Ho Chi Minh, etc. All together now, meet and greet.

Before Errol Morris‘s Oscar-winning 2004 doc my prime meditation about McNamara was that he was a haunted man — that he had the ghosts of tens of thousands of Vietnam infantrymen swirling around him like banshees. Then The Fog of War came along and I felt a strange kinship/comfort level with the guy. I said to myself, “At least he’s admitting to being wrong about Vietnam and at least he’s got a stirring film chronicling this awakening.” But now, this morning, I’m back to the ghosts.

A few minutes ago I asked Morris for a eulogy/epitaph of some kind. Maybe he’ll send one along later today. 24/7 column-writing waits for no one.

A week or so ago the Toronto Film Festival re-invited veteran journalists to sign up and get themselves squared away, so that’s what I did. I know that the whole show is moving south sooner or later to the Bell Lightbox, so I asked Toronto Star critic Peter Howell what’s doing. “They’re still building the Bell Lightbox,” he answered. “It may be ready for part of the 2010 fest, and supposedly will be ready for 2011. The press part of the festival this year will still mostly happen at the [Bay and Bloor] Manulife Centre.”

The Harry Potter movies have always made money, but they haven’t mattered for years. Certainly not to people like me. They’re just big-budget cult movies that spin round and round inside their own CG-pumped fishbowl. I got off the boat five years ago (i.e., after Alfonso Cuaron ‘s Azkaban) and I’ll never get back on. Ever. I might feel differently if the producers were to venture out into the world and leave Hogwarts behind, but that’s never been in the cards.

Variety‘s Todd McCarthy, in any event, has reviewed the latest — Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Warner Bros. 7.15):

“Kids’ stuff is a thing of the past in [this entry],” he writes. “Suddenly looking quite grown up, the students at Hogwarts are forced to grapple with heavy issues of mortality, memory and loss in this sixth installment in the series of bigscreen adaptations of J.K. Rowling‘s Potter tales. Dazzlingly well made and perhaps deliberately less fanciful than the previous entries, this one is played in a mode closer to palpable life-or-death drama than any of the others and is quite effective as such.”

And yet Half-Blood Prince is rated PG rather than PG-13, he notes, and is the third-longest feature in the series at 153 minutes….good God!

I thought at first that the N.Y. Observer‘s Sara Vilkomerson had echoed my view that Marion Coltillard‘s Public Enemies performance “is an award-quality nail-down,” in part because “no dramatic actress in recent memory has conveyed as much intestinal steel.” I was led to think so by an online friend who said she’d climbed aboard the Cotillard train, etc. But then I read her piece (“We Say Oui to Marion Cotillard“) and realized all she was saying was that her “total and unabashed girl-crush” was going “stronger than ever.”

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs took the #1 spot with a three-day haul of $42,500,000 and a five-day haul of $67,506,000, averaging $10,368 per situation. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen took a 61% hit from last weekend’s opener with earnings of $42,500,000 — expected. And yet it’s only $7 million away from a $300 million gross. Public Enemies was third with a three-day take of $26,172,000 and a five-day haul of $41,044,000, averaging an overall $7,850 per situation.

If Enemies triples its three-day opening figure, it’ll end up with a little more than $75 million, give or take. It would obviously look better on the ledger sheet if it ends up cresting $100 million. But will it? $7850 per situation isn’t all that terrific.

The best per-screen average anywhere was earned again by The Hurt Locker. Kathryn Bigelow‘s edge-junkie film expanded from 4 to 9 screens this weekend, and took down $126,000. The total gross stands at $365,000.

I’m guessing that most megaplex morons will most likely steer clear of The Hurt Locker because…well, because they’re primitive types who tend to get all queasy when they sense complexity. But it’s clearly starting to catch on and stands a better-than-decent chance of taking in a good $30 million or so. That’s an appropriate amount for one of the two or three best films of the year so far…no?

This may be the best modern-consciousness upgrade to happen to the legend of Fred Astaire since that 1997 Dirt Devil ad. I realize many people saw that ad as a desecration, but for 97% of viewers it was an introduction to the guy.

The Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell has listed his ten favorite road movies. Here’s his list coupled with my critiques/reactions, followed by my own top ten:

(l. to r.) Randy Quaid, Otis Young and Jack Nicholson in Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail.

Howell: 1. It Happened One Night (Wells reaction: Moderately appealing but Frank Capra is thoroughly over by any reasonable 21st Century standard); 2. One Week (Wells reaction: What?); 3. Two-Lane Blacktop (Wells reaction: I bought the Criterion DVD only to realize what a meandering and enervated thing it is, and seriously lacking in visual intrigue); 4. Y tu mama tambien (Wells reaction: perhaps not a top-tenner but a very fine film); 5. Thelma & Louise (Wells reaction: Driving your car over a cliff is a romantic-nihilist-crap finale, but if you’re going to use this don’t gussy it up with slow-mo photography and a personality clip reel); 6. Easy Rider (Wells reaction: definitely a top-tenner); 7. The Sure Thing (Wells reaction: A likable tits-and-zits ’80s movie, nothing more); 8. The Motorcycle Diaries (Wells reaction: 100% agreement); 9. Duel (Wells reaction: Not sprawling or meditative enough to qualify as real road movie); 10. The Cannonball Run (Wells reaction: pure garbage — a choice that insults and degrades the genre).

Wells: 1. The Grapes of Wrath (first because of the compassion and humanity and assertive political current); 2. The Wizard of Oz (the great-grandfather of all road movies); 3. Sideways (“I’m not drinkin’ fuckin’ Merlot!” — the kind of line that the Cannonball Run creators didn’t have the creative edge to even consider using); 4. Badlands (“This is the last time I get together with the hell-bent type”); 5. The Last Detail (again — compassion for sympathetic trapped characters, humor, melancholy resolution); 6. Apocalypse Now (a river is a road and vice versa). 7. Little Miss Sunshine (greatest 21st Century road movie thus far); 8. Easy Rider; 9. The Motorcycle Diaires. 10. Rain Man. Honorable Mentions: Planes Trains and Automobiles, Five Easy Pieces, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, Y tu mama tambien, Road Trip, The Straight Story, Fandango.

The generic road-movie definition calls them stories that happen over the course of a journey. As Howell writes, “The characters in transit have to experience some change to their attitudes and outlook, or else the trip is wasted. They have to not just go somewhere, but more importantly, they have to arrive.” Agreed.

Howell’s kicker — “And if they can do it with a smile, all the better” — is where he and I differ. To hell with smiles as ends in themselves. Remember those smiley buttons from the ’80s? The face of emotional fascism. Smirks and frowns are far more trustworthy.

For the last two weeks I was afflicted with a kind of malware that had the effect of re-directing Google searches to idiot-trash sites. Google wasn’t entirely useless as I could at least copy URLs and paste them into an address bar, but easy click-throughs were out. I tried running my Trend Micro Anti-Virus and Super Anti-Spyware softwares — no help at all. This morning I paid $30 for the latest version of PC Tools Spyware Doctor — partial success! There are still crap fragments in the system but Google seems to be mostly working again. Just saying.