Shout Factory’s Bluray of Werner Herzog‘s Fitzcarraldo will be released on 1.13.15. The cover is actually the one-sheet art used by the film’s German distributor 32 years ago.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Don Siegel‘s Flaming Star. I probably haven’t, and if not because I’ve always thought that Elvis Presley made exactly two and a half decent films — Love Me Tender, Loving You (i.e., the halfer) and King Creole — and it was all downhill from then on. Now I’m starting to suspect otherwise. I’ll never buy the Flaming Star Bluray but maybe a high-def version will stream down the road.

“It is surprising…that this small, somber view of some of the misunderstanding and bloody strife between settlers and Indians in Texas of the 1870s is equally passionate about both,” N.Y. Times critic A.H. Weiler wrote on 12.17.60. “No guitar gala, Flaming Star is an unpretentious but sturdy western that takes the time, the place and the people seriously.

Adopt has scheduled a cool-people-only screening of Nuri Bilge Ceylan‘s Winter Sleep, winner of the Palme d’Or winner at last May’s Cannes Film Festival. It’ll happen on Monday, 11.3 at 6 pm at the UTA Screening Room on Civic Center Drive. There is no more ardent fan of Ceylan than myself, but I missed Sleep in Cannes and then blew it off in Toronto also because of the 196-minute length. I’ve been told that it’s cool to invite “friends and fellow bloggers based in L.A.” so those with the right pedigree need to get in touch. The UTA screening room is about as good as it gets, quality-wise, so this’ll be a ripe opportunity to catch it in a deluxe way. Winter Sleep will open on 12.19 in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC. The next two dozen or so markets will open between January 9th and 16th, timed to the announcement of the Oscar nominations.

A 10.25 Hollywood Reporter piece by Paul Bond quotes Exodus star Christian Bale by way of a 10.21 Christianity Today article by Drew Turney, and to me it’s hilarious. “I think [Moses] was likely schizophrenic,” Bale told reporters during a recent Los Angeles sitdown. “He was one of the most barbaric individuals that I ever read about in my life…a very troubled and tumultuous man who fought greatly against God, against his calling.”

So much for the staunch Christian view of the man, which was more or less delivered in Cecil B. DeMille‘s The Ten Commandments. I don’t know if Christian nutters will rise up in protest and give Exodus shit the way they dumped all over Noah, but it probably won’t matter if they do. The fact is that Noah did pretty well at the end of the day — $101 million domestic, $359 million worldwide.

“First and foremost, anything you’ve heard about the sound in that packed-to-the-rafters 70mm IMAX screening at the TCL Chinese Theater Thursday night is absolutely true. Take a proprietary IMAX sound mix and speaker configuration that can be pretty inferior and add in the fact that Nolan’s mixes tend to be muddied historically (then consider that for some reason the system was turned up to 11) — it was a recipe for disaster.” — from Kris Tapley‘s In Contention review of Interstellar, posted this morning.

“I couldn’t understand full stretches of dialogue and the IMAX of it all with the pitch darkness of the celluloid (too dark, I’d wager), it just wasn’t settling.

Interstellar is one of those big, rib-rattling, epic-sprawl movies that you only get from determined, well-funded visionaries like…well, like Chris Nolan. And this, make no mistake, is a super-charged time-travel flick that is also very personal. It’s basically about Nolan saying “there’s no place like home, like family, like love”…probably due to a suspicion that he works too obsessively and is missing out on his children’s lives or something along those lines. Sounds like The Wizard of Oz in Space, right? Without the jokes and the songs and the fancifulness, of course. And without, I regret to say, any way to believe in other-wordly realms. Interstellar is quite the wowser throttle ride — you have to see it, of course — but for me it didn’t hang together in a way that felt right or rooted or satisfying. It “played” but it didn’t sink in.

Interstellar is basically a grim story about love, loss, heroism…a down-the-rabbit-hole tale about seeking and adventuring and returning, Odysseus-style. It’s riveting at times. Now and then it’s breathtaking. And at times it is speechy and banal. At times it’s one of those “wait..give me that again?” movies. I just didn’t believe or understand a lot of it. And it has one scene that, no lie, is comically awful. Beware the killer colonist who once dropped in on Che Guevara!

That was my reaction, for the most part. I was “impressed” by it as far as the chops and the eye-filling scenery, both local and cosmic, were concerned and I generally liked the rumble-in-space stuff, but I couldn’t buy into it, man…not really. (Does this mean I’ll lose out on Paramount award-season ads? I’m weeping over this but I gotta be me.) But a friend tells me that Emile Hirsch and Chris Rock and Adrien Brody and a lot of other celebrities who saw it last Wednesday night were really blown away so…you know, don’t let me stop you. (Rock told my friend that he “doesn’t think any film can possibly match it.”) It’ll be Best Picture nominated, I suppose, because the community wants to kiss Nolan’s ass for the same reason it has smooched Spielberg’s ass for the last 39 years. And it’ll probably win two or three tech Oscars. And it’ll make loads of money.

Laura Poitras‘s Citizenfour rated a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and 89% on Metacritic — ratings I consider justified and appropriate. I’ve already written that I think it’s an all-but-guaranteed nominee for Best Feature-Length Documentary. It’s a real-life, you-are-there political intelligence thriller, and a fascinating horror film in that the boogie man is never seen or even heard, really, but is relentlessly sensed. He hovers. On the other hand the 63% Rotten Tomatoes and 62% Metacritic ratings given to Lynn Shelton‘s Laggies feel crabby. This is Shelton’s best, most agreeable film yet. Keira Knightley‘s performance never seems acted, certainly not pre- considered — pure moment-to-moment behavior. And then the film gets a nice boost from the wonderfully droll Sam Rockwell. I would even call it a kind of modest breakthrough. Reactions?

I was a wee bit surprised by the 10.16 announcement that Saul Dibbs‘ Suite Francaise, a World War II romance about a French wife (Michelle Williams) who falls in love with a German officer (Matthias Schoenaerts), won’t have its first L.A. screening at AFI Fest but during the American Film Market. The AFM is not exactly a prestigious venue. It tends to favor “market”-level films, and it’s sometimes tricky for journalists to get into certain screenings. Based on a book by Irene Nemirovsky, the film costars Kristin Scott Thomas, Sam Riley, Ruth Wilson, Lambert Wilson and Wolf of Wall Street‘s Margot Robbie. The Weinstein Co. has U.S. distribution rights. The AFM will run 11.5 through 11.12 in Santa Monica. One question: why would planes from either side of the conflict drop bombs on civilians? To what end?

Beanstalk: “Why is Birdman in the top spot? Boyhood should be. This looks like too much bias. You should distinguish yourself by only targeting movies that have been seen. You should follow the lead of Anne Thompson.”

Jack: “I admire Boyhood but it’s a safe, non-risky consensus choice. It’s the movie you say you really like if you want to be liked by the crowd, and I don’t necessarily see a great value in that. I’m very proud of the fact that I’m not a meticulous, fair-minded pulse-taker like Steve Pond. Right now the only unseen films that have people even half-excited are American Sniper, A Most Violent Year and The Gambler. People expect Unbroken to be good in a humanistic, touching-bottom sort of way, but I wouldn’t say they’re particularly cranked about it. I don’t know what people are saying about Into The Woods, but anyone who loves good music loves Sondheim.”

Beanstalk: “Okay, but putting two unseen films on your chart devalues your credibility. Wait until the time is right. Take it from me — you’ll be written off.”

Jack: “You can’t say with a straight face that the very commendable and respectable Boyhood should be in the top spot above the brilliant Birdman. It’s a very fine and brave and novel film and Linklater has my sincere respect, but you can’t say it’s the very best. Besides when have I ever placed a high premium on predicting what the Academy thinks? I believe in blowing the horn and not baahing like sheep.”

The American middle class has been so thoroughly ravaged by the American oligarchs over the last 30 years they aren’t pulling their pants up any more — they’re just leaving them bunched around the ankles. Certainly since the dawn of Dubya. I don’t know when the term “the American dream” began to sound fairly laughable but the fix has been in for so long that it looks like up to everyone. Should I say “except” the wealthy or “including” them? I’m not doing too badly myself I’ve played it smart by travelling light, keeping expenses down and borrowing nothing.

A 10.25 Salon piece by Richard Eskow called “7 Facts That Show The American Dream is Dead” plows the usual turf. The middle-class can’t breathe for the debt. No one can afford to retire. One-income families are a thing of the past, and even those with two incomes can’t even seem to get ahead. The terms of most college loans equal economic enslavement. Nobody can afford to retire or take vacations. Health care costs are rising and making things all the harder for Joe Schmoe.

I was a huge fan of the Movieline Oscar Index chart that Stu VanAirsdale created, maintained and constantly updated during the 2010 and 2011 Oscar season. (Stu left Movieline in July 2012.) I recently wrote Stu and asked if he’d mind if I launched a tribute/ripoff version of Oscar Index. His response: “I can’t really stop anyone from launching a variation on it, and I wish anyone who does the best of luck.”

I realize that the below image is a bit small so please click on the large version of the chart. And please be patient with my crude Photoshop skills at this early stage.

Thanks to Brooklyn-based web designer Sean Grip for doing the initial heavy lifting and to HE’s Jett Wells for helping me learn enough of Photoshop to size the heads and titles properly and make sure the graph lines are the right colors, etc. The intention, God help me, is to eventually post freshly considered Oscar Balloon charts three times weekly — Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress and Best Supporting Actor. It’s going to be hugely time-consuming on top of everything else, but I’ll give it a shot. First pair on Monday, the second on Wednesday, the third on Friday or Saturday…something like that. Maybe I’ll post an occasional Best Documentary and Best Foreign Language Feature chart…maybe.

The Top 11 Best Picture Contenders (as of Sunday, 10.26): 1. Birdman; 2. Boyhood; 3. The Imitation Game; 4. The Theory of Everything; 5. Gone Girl; 6. Unbroken; 7. Interstellar; 8. Whiplash; 9. Foxcatcher; 10. A Most Violent Year; 11. American Sniper.

Jim Carrey has a point. Doing Lincoln car commercials in the wake of an Oscar win suggests a certain degree of self-absorption. And taking your eyes off the freeway for six or seven seconds in order to stare at your fingers…not cool either. But the dark philosophical ruminations have a ring.