Lee Siegel, writing for the Wall Street Journal‘s real estate section, takes a poke at Hollywood’s long tradition of of claiming spiritual death by station wagon in a piece called “Why Does Hollywood Hate the Suburbs?”

Siegel basically thinks that the industry’s view of suburbs as sedate soul-killing gulags, advanced in such films as Revolutionary Road, The Ice Storm, Far From Heaven, The Stepford Wives (both versions), No Down Payment, Strangers When We Meet and American Beauty, is somehow undeserved and over-baked.

The piece leads you to conclude that Siegel either (a) never grew up in a suburb as a teenager or (b) is kowtowing to the Journal‘s advertising interests. I grew up in the suburbs and I’m telling you they’re hell for young guys who hunger for the real thing. They’re fine for kids and moms and older people who want peace and quiet and lots of trees and green lawns in the summertime. They offer good schools, of course, and the girls you meet in the richer suburbs (like the towns in Fairfield County, which is actually exurbia) tend to be a lot prettier than most because beauty follows money.

But I knew a few guys who felt that life was so nice in Wilton, Connecticut, and all the towns in that realm (Westport, New Canaan, Darien, Ridgefield, Weston, Easton, Redding) that they decided they probably couldn’t live as well and might live a lot worse if they went out into the world, so they decided to stick around and get local jobs, etc. And yes, some turned out okay (especially the ones who got into construction) but others didn’t do so well, succumbing to the usual maladies out of boredom or whatnot, in some cases curling into fetal balls and dying of spiritual malnutrition. Hell, I was almost one of them.

Here’s MCN’s Kim Voynar taking issue with Siegel’s piece also.

Tom Arnold is starring in this basketball-related CBS Interactive web series called Heckle-U, which will begin in February and run for ten episodes…fine. I met Arnold back in ’99 or ’00 at one of Jonathan Kaufer ‘s chinese-food-and-DVD parties, and I liked him right away for something that happened before we shook hands or said hello.

I had parked my car down the road and was approaching Kaufer’s home, which was located up in the hills inside this gated McMansion community, in the darkness. I saw a group of three or four people standing outside the black-iron gate. Usually you just push the intercom button and the owner buzzes you through and that’s that, but this group, which Arnold was a part of, was just standing around and murmuring to each other. (I had noticed them as I drove up so they’d been there a couple of minutes.) So I said out loud, not knowing who anyone was, “How come all you guys are just standing there?”

And Arnold replied in that unmistakable voice, “Because we’re assholes?”

In Leslie Bennett‘s Vanity Fair profile of Cate Blanchett, the actress talks about the Benjamin Button grim-reaper factor. Director David Fincher told her it would be “about death,” she says, “and I think that’s great.” And so do most of us, I believe. We alI think it’s pretty darn cool when a movie comes along and tries to get us to confront our mortality.

“We’ve enshrined the purity, sanctity, value, and importance of bringing children into the world,” says Blanchett, “[and] yet we don’t discuss death. There used to be an enshrined period where mourning was a necessary part of going through the process of grieving; death wasn’t considered morbid or antisocial. But that’s totally gone. Now we’re all terrified of aging, terrified of death. This film deals with death as a release. I hope it’s a moment of catharsis.”

“It’s sort of like a repository for your grief, about whatever you grieve about — the loss of loved ones, the missing of opportunities, whatever,” Fincher tells Bennetts,. “You hope it will leave people feeling hopeful about certain things, and sad about certain things.”

The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil is taken aback that Village Voice columnist Michael Musto doesn’t see Leonardo DiCaprio being Best Actor nominated for Revolutionary Road, especially since Leo was nominated the year before last for Blood Diamond “of all things…c’mon!” And Musto says Leo was better in Blood Diamond. No, he wasn’t. And he was nominated for that Ed Zwick film because he used a South African accent. That was it. That was the whole thing.

This is my last and final post about the emotionally vivid cowboy hat, which connects to an item I ran yesterday. Which you need to read along with the comments in order to understand the context. Okay? Do that first and then come back to this.

The Star hotel is a b & b — not a hotel. I stayed there in ’07 and ’08 and was very content to do so. Carol Rixey, who’s been managing until this year (when her son took over), runs it quietly and efficiently but with a kind of personal touch. She makes you feel as if you’re staying in someone’s home back in 1962 or something. My mother would love it if she was still getting around. So would have Gary Cooper , I suspect, if he had dropped by during the Eisenhower administration.

For the Star is a quiet little old-time America trip — a kind of time-capsule remnant of the way it all used to be and feel. (Except for the wi-fi.) It’s a homey little place with family pictures and little knick-knacks on the walls, and it all makes you feel good and settled-down. Carol serves breakfast in the morning, there are always potato chips and pretzels and cheese squares on the kitchen table, and if you’re feeling sick with a fever (as I was last year, beginning on the day that Heath Ledger was found dead) Carol might offer you a homemade remedy or a first-aid pack that she keeps in a box near the front entrance.

But you have to be a mellow, quiet, laid-back type to fit in. Some haven’t. A couple of lesbians going through relationship problems stayed there last year — it was a little bit weird. A pair of Australian party animals stayed there the year before — they were coarse and gross and stank of booze in the morning, and one of them slurped his Cheerios like a pig. But the Toronto Globe and Mail‘s Liam Lacey has stayed there year after year in a very col and quiet way. He gets it, fits in, etc. As I have.

Star hotel”s dining room

Carol is a Texan but she kind of reminds me of my grandmother (my mom’s mom) in a tough way. She’s no softy and won’t take any guff, but she’s maternal and caring in her way. And I came to feel very cared for there. I could talk to Carol like she was family and vice versa. And the wifi is pretty damn good. Not the fastest but always functioning.

So when I said to her last year that I’d like to leave my cowboy hat there so I could just pick up in ’09 where I left off in ’08, I was obviously saying to her (in my head at least, and I can’t imagine how she could have interpreted this any differently) that I’d like it very much if she could be a nice and considerate grandma and hold my hat for me, and that I’d be back to stay the following year. Simple and quite clear all around. I trusted her to get what I meant because, I figured, she surely recognizes the trust and affection that we’ve had between us over the past two years.

But now things have ended badly. Very badly. I just heard from Carol that she considers my having discussed the matter in the column to be a form of blackmail (a somewhat hysterical interpretation, in my view) and that she’s given my hat to the Park City police and that I can pick it up there when I get to town. The fuzz, for God’s sake! She’s brought the cops into this! Talk about a violation of the trust that comes with friendship and the values of good grandma-hood!

The idea that nice people can turn around and suddenly act erratically and illogically (to put it in gentle terms) is not a very pleasant one, but obviously it happens. Good God.

Typical Star Hotel bedroom.

“Out of all the guys who could be nominated, don’t we all want to see Mickey Rourke win? How great would that be to see this guy shamble up to the stage, tears flowing — it’d be amazing. And I’m not even a huge fan. I like the ‘idea’ of Rourke maybe more than the man himself. But the way he really puts it all out there in this film is pretty great. I don’t even think he was acting. So maybe, somehow, he doesn’t deserve it over some other guy who really is ‘acting,’ but it’s still a performance, and it might be the best thing anyone’s done this year (except for Ledger, of course).” — HE reader “Mindless Obamaton,” posted at 5:53 am.

Updated with comment added: Daily Beast contributor Gerald Posner reported today that yesterday (12.28) “a Los Angeles entertainment honcho shared a text message with [him] that Mickey Rourke had sent him about Sean Penn: ‘Look seans an old friend of mine [but] i didnt buy his performance at all — thought he did an average pretend acting like he was gay besides hes one of the most homophobic people i kno'” [sic]

Needless to say, it’s extremely scummy of Posner’s anonymous “Los Angeles entertainment honcho” to pass along a privately-sent text message with the idea that it might possibly turn up in a Daily Beast story. It’s craven and low. I posted the item because Posner is a highly respected investigative reporter and author, and because the Daily Beast is a top-of-the-pile, high-profile site. But two key factors were at work here. One, the story wouldn’t have been considered persuasive or titillating enough to run without the text message quote. And two, Posner and the DB obviously know that running the text message quote essentially amounts to a double-edged smear, plain and simple. I think it’s going to backfire against Rourke and in Penn’s favor.

Posner writes that “several entertainment industry sources” have said that Rourke is “trash talking” Penn, but he only mentions two — the text message plus an alleged comment Rourke made backstage after a “Late Night with David Letterman” taping on 12.23. Rourke allegedly said “he was surprised that so many people seemed to think that Penn was his Oscar competition since ‘I’m not even sure he’ll get a nomination.'” Doesn’t the word “several” mean at least…what, four or five? (If I had three sources on a story, I wouldn’t say I had “several” sources — I would say I had three.)

A friend has written HE with the following comment: “Gerald Posner’s use of an unattributed source for his Daily Beast story about the Mickey Rourke/Sean Penn texting reminds me of the sermon in Doubt in which Philip Seymour Hoffman speaks about gossip and compares its irreparable damage to the feathers from a pillow dispersing in the air.”

Two Lovers (2929 Prods., 2.13.09) is a very decent…no, better-than-decent blue-collar drama from director-writer James Gray. It plays in the vein of Paddy Chayefsky‘s Marty, and has very fine performances from the entire cast, but especially from Joaquin Phoenix, Gwynneth Paltrow and Vinessa Shaw.

The ten biggest-grossing films of the year, two of which — WALL*E and The Dark Knight — were serious knockouts. A third — Jon Favreau‘s Ironman — was a very satisfying commercial fanboy flick. The other seven represented varying grades of muck and disappointment.

“If you’re looking for definitive proof of how our culture (and particularly our film culture) is steadily devolving and dumbing itself down, check out the Ben Lyons-Ben Mankiewicz version of At The Movies, which premiered a few days ago. This is not a TV show about how good or bad the latest movies are. It’s a show about the End of Civilization as some of us have known it. If the Eloi of George Pal‘s The Time Machine were to produce their own movie-review show, this is how it would play.” — originally posted on 9.16.08 in a piece called “Forget These Guys,” and re-posted to contribute to the current pile-on, as evidenced by today’s riff by Mark Graham of New York/Vulture.

Two weeks ago I met Revolutionary Road costar Michael Shannon, whose brief but quite breathtaking performance in that film ought to win him the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. It happened in Tribeca. I was told by his publicist that photography couldn’t happen, and then we sat down in a restaurant that was too noisy for the recording of our chat to be of any value.

Michael Shannon, snapped at a Revolutionary Road party last month at 21.

Not having anything to work with prompted a bit of a delay in writing this piece, but at least I’ve gotten around to it. It certainly wasn’t for a lack of enthusiasm or fascination with Shannon, who’s a very intriguing piece of work.

I’m a bit angry that none of the critics groups or kiss-ass groups (BFCA, HFPA, NBR) have given Shannon a Best Supporting Actor award or nomination. He’s totally brilliant and hilarious as the nutjob mathematician who spells out exactly (if uncomfortably) what’s going on between the film’s unhappy married couple, Frank and April Wheeler, portrayed by the excellent Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

Shannon’s Road turn registers in nearly the same way that Heath Ledger ‘s does in The Dark Knight, as both give portrayals of truth-telling loons. The difference is that Shannon, playing a period character, is quieter, more concentrated and buttoned-down. And of course, far less showy. But no less bull’s eye.

Shannon is a very cool, free-thinking fellow. My son Jett (who sat with us) liked him alot but thought his eyes looked a bit scary. Naaah, I said — more like the eyes of a 16 year-old kid who’s very bright and perceptive but isn’t 100% sure who he is or what he’s up against. A guy who doesn’t have it all worked out but is open about that, which is a very good thing from the perspective of a watcher or listener.

For me Shannon is a cross between ’50s poet-adventurer Neal Cassady and the prophet Elijah in Herman Melville‘s Moby Dick, only a bit more vivid in that he seems to be really and truly living in his own realm.

I asked him at one point if he owns a Blu-ray player, and he talked about how the name Blu-ray sounds a little spooky, like “some kind of sea animal” — a blue sea monster that can kill with a single strike of its tail, say. Talk to 100 people about Blu-Ray and 99 of them will talk about the picture quality or how they’d love to finally buy one or whatever. Only one in 100, maybe one out of 1000, will answer the way Shannon did.

When Shannon was answering a question in front of a Screen Actors Guild audience following a Revolutionary Road screening a couple of weeks earlier, he spoke as if he was in a kitchen and talking to some guy standing nearby as he’s fishing through the freezer and looking for ice cream. He doesn’t give a performed answer, in other words — he speaks like a regular guy talking about how he worked on his car’s brake lining the other day and needs to go back and finish the job. Nothing to prove or put across. Just the facts.

Shannon’s next job is Werner Herzog‘s My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, which will begin shooting next month. The first phase of filming will go from January12th to 20th. This will keep Shannon away, unfortunately, from the ’09 Sundance Film Festival, where two of his unseen films will be showing. He’d like to go, he says, but duty calls.

The Sundance film Shannon is especially proud of, he says, is Noah Buschel ‘s The Missing Person . Shannon plays a private detective looking for a guy who’s ostensibly disappeared on a train from Chicago to Los Angeles, but then it is gradually learned that the cause of the disappearance was something else entirely. The film costars Amy Ryan.

Shannon and a woman I can’t identify, between shots on Revolutionary Road.

The other is Shana Feste‘s The Greatest, a drama about a family coping with a son who’s been killed in a car crash and the young girl who is carrying the son’s child. Susan Sarandon and Pierce Brosnan play the grieving mom and dad; Shannon plays the other driver.

Shannon is only 34 (same age as Leonardo DiCaprio), but he’s been acting in films since 1992, when he was only 18. He played bit and character parts throughout the ’90s and the early ’00s. Two of his smaller roles that I remember with some clarity are cock-eyed military types in Joel Schumacher‘s Tigerland and Michael Bay ‘s Pearl Harbor.

Shannon’s attention-getting breakout came in ’06 when he starred in William Friedkin ‘s Bug, an upscale horror film that I’ve never seen. (Apologies.) Then he played the savior of the two buried guys in Oliver Stone‘s World Trade Center — the guy who leaves his job in Wilton, Connecticut, on 9/11, puts on his military clothes and drives into Manhattan to help pick through the rubble and help out any way he can.

Shannon’s next punch-through came when he played a cold-eyed nogoodnik looking to scam or rip-off Ethan Hawke in Sidney Lumet‘s Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead.

Shannon began his career as a stage actor in Chicago, where he helped found A Red Orchid Theatre and has also worked with Steppenwolf Theatre Company and the Northlight Theatre. He currently lives in the Red Hook area of Brooklyn with his wife (or perhaps just his girlfriend), actress Kate Arrington, a Steppenwolf ensemble member . They have a daughter, according to his Wikipedia bio page.

The reasons for the disappearance of Jennifer Seitz, the 36 year-old Florida woman who went over the side of a cruise ship off the coast of Cancun last Friday night, were speculated upon by an MSNBC guest commentator a few minutes ago.

The one that got me was the Titanic scenario — i.e., an allegation that lots and lots of drunken cruise ship passengers over the years have gotten bombed and then staggered out to the bow section and done Leonardo DiCaprio’s “I’m the king of the world!” routine (standing on the rails, beating their chests and screaming) and then lost their balance and fallen over.

If I had done that in a state of total drunkenness and fallen into the sea and been fished out and lived, I would’ve called my attorney the next day and sued the pants off director-writer James Cameron, DiCaprio, 20th Century Fox, Bill Mechanic, Jon Landau , Paramount and anyone else who had anything to do with that 1997 film. Yes, I’m kidding.

That king-of-the-world stunt is an alpha male thing, no? What 36 year-old woman in her right mind would do that? I think Seitz’s husband…I don’t know anything. But we all suspect the same thing, don’t we? She goes over the side around 8 pm, he goes off and fucking gambles and then waits eight hours to report that she’s missing? As Willem Dafoe‘s Jesus says about God’s intentions in The Last Temptation of Christ , “I think he wants to push me over !”