The none-too-bright individual known as Michael Egan has dropped his sexual abuse lawsuit against Bryan Singer, according to a Variety report. The guy goes to all kinds of trouble and then he blows off a modest cash offer (which so alienated his attorney Jeff Herman that he severed relations with Egan) and now this — a complete collapse. If you’re going to do something, man up and see it through. (As Bugsy Siegel put it, “If you’re gonna get tough with a guy, stick to it.”) And if you don’t have the horses to win your case, at least be smart enough to accept a “take it and go away” cash settlement when it’s offered. Egan previously dropped sexual abuse lawsuits against former Disney hotshot David Neuman and former TV exec Garth Ancier. What a lame-o.

I was reminded this morning that David Dobkin‘s The Judge (Warner Bros., 10.10) runs two hours and 21 minutes. My first reaction was one of surprise. This is not a solemn courtroom drama like The Verdict, which ran 129 minutes. And it’s not Scent of A Woman, which needed 156 minutes to let a blind Al Pacino rant and rave and threaten suicide and chew the scenery. The Judge is a formula movie about a brilliant yuppie-prick attorney (Robert Downey, Jr.) gradually forgiving his estranged father (Robert Duvall) when he defends him in a murder trial, and in so doing becoming a human being. Films like this are supposed to get the job done in, oh, 110 to 115 minutes. 120 is pushing it, and if they can wrap things up in 100 minutes so much the better. I realize that no good film is too long, and no bad film is too short. I get that. But I was still surprised to hear “141 minutes.”

“It’s delightful, and delightfully eccentric…it is very satisfying, after years of watching [Josh] Charles on The Good Wife, to see him take possession of a new character, especially one whose motivations are as much a mystery to the character as to you. For an hour, you discover a man finding himself, incremental layer by layer, expression by expression.” — N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis, 5.22.14, from Cannes Film Festival. “It’s the most inspired thing I’ve seen…not only don’t you know how it got made — you also don’t quite know how what’s been made has made you this happy [and] this profoundly.” – Grantland‘s Wesley Morris, ditto. Pascale Ferran‘s film opens 9.12 via Sundance Selects.

Remember Inez, the Central American motel chambermaid whom Luke Wilson fell in love with in Bottle Rocket?

“Have you ever seen Jean-Luc Godard‘s Contempt? You, sir, are a fitting object. Please, please sit in front of me in coach someday. I can’t wait to ‘accidentally’ spill a cup of scalding hot coffee on your head. In the words of Gordon Gekko, ‘Hot coffee is good. Hot coffee scalding the scalp of an avaricious entitled slimeball is even better.’ I don’t mind sitting behind a person who reclines a little bit, but people who recline more than that deserve whatever aggressive pushback may come their way. You don’t mention your fee, by the way, for agreeing not to recline. What would it be? $50? You, sir, are a deplorable life form.” — My response to an 8.27 piece by N.Y. Times guest contributor Josh Barro (@jbarro), titled “Don’t Want Me to Recline My Airline Seat? You Can Pay Me.”

It would appear that the first snaps of the reclusive Nikki Finke have been posted by a nasty little site that has made no secret about wanting to get her. Finke has written harshly about others and now it’s payback time, or so goes the site’s rationale. I’m no fan of tabloidy “gotcha!” pieces or the snippy, bitchy vibe of sites like this, but these fellows seem to have done their homework and captured the Real McCoy. I think it’s permissible to post these as there have been no photos of Finke for many, many years and these snaps appear to be legit. It also appears that Nikkifinke.com has stalled as the last story, about the death of Robin Williams, was posted on Monday, 8.11.

A movie is usually one thing, the marketing materials another. Because the latter almost always lies. But if — I say “if” — Stephen Daldry‘s Trash is anything like the “sell”, watch out. I don’t trust movies that use a poster in which the lead character is raising his arms in triumph or joy. I don’t trust stories about poor, pure-of-heart kids vs. rich, venal criminals. I don’t trust movies in which a character says he/she has decided on a course of action because it’s “right.” I’m concerned about the basic mindset of any film that costars liberal do-gooder Martin Sheen. And I’m highly suspicious of this capsule description: “Set in Brazil, three kids make a discovery in a garbage dump soon find themselves running from the cops and trying to right a terrible wrong.”

Enough with the “I can’t find a project that really excites me” shpiel. After a certain number of years of relative inactivity it’s just not cool. Lynch sees “no future in cinema“? Fine. Create a cable longform of some kind, something for Netflix…anything. No more sitting on the bench. It’s unbecoming.

I’m presuming, of course, that the first Telluride screening of Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) will be a levitational knockout, but I feel badly that I wasn’t able to attend this morning’s press screening in Venice, which by several accounts was a fucking corker. Variety‘s Peter Debruge is calling Birdman “a triumph on every creative level, from casting to execution, that will electrify the industry, captivate arthouse and megaplex crowds alike, send awards pundits into orbit and give fresh wings to Keaton’s career.”

To hear it from Deadline‘s Nancy Tartagione, Birdman “bowed to one of the best receptions I have ever experienced on the Lido” this morning. “Applause, laughter and strong emotion emanated from attendees in the refurbed Sala Darsena this morning during the first press screening. Making my way out afterwards, I heard ‘bellissimo’ uttered at least a dozen times.”

“Birdman flies very, very high.” writes Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy. “Intense emotional currents and the jagged feelings of volatile actors are turned loose to raucous dramatic and darkly comedic effect in one of the most sustained examples of visually fluid tour de force cinema anyone’s ever seen, all in the service of a story that examines the changing nature of celebrity and the popular regard for fame over creative achievement. The film’s exhilarating originality, black comedy and tone that is at once empathetic and acidic will surely strike a strong chord with audiences looking for something fresh that will take them somewhere they haven’t been before.”

In other words, a fair percentage of the megaplex idiots are going to go “meh…we want our usual crap!”

The Sala Darsena was apparently “it” this morning, the hottest place to be, the one spot on the globe where even Winged Gods (including HE’s own Movie Godz) were looking for a seat. “Is this taken? Sorry, man, but you can’t just point and say ‘it’s taken’…you have to mark it with a jacket or urine or a folded program or something….you have mark your territory like an animal.”

The Gurus of Gold have spitballed their initial Best Picture predictions. The favorites are as follows: Birdman, Boyhood, Unbroken, Foxcatcher, Selma, Interstellar, Wild, Fury, Inherent Vice, The Theory of Everything, The Imitation Game, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Into the Woods, American Sniper, A Most Violent Year, Big Eyes, Mr. Turner, Exodus: Gods and kings, Men, Women & Children, St. Vincent, Rosewater, Trash. The ultimate hotties always (a) hold up a fair, honest mirror of some kind, (b) simultaneously comfort and challenge, and (c) say “this is who we are, could be, used to be or need to be.” I’m sensing that the standouts will be Birdman, Interstellar, Wild, Into The Woods, either Unbroken or The Theory of Everything but not both, and at least one of the violent male-realm dramas — A Most Violent Year, Fury, American Sniper. I don’t know what to expect from Selma — I just hope it’s thorough and nervy. Gone Girl is aiming to be what it needs to be and that’s all. It won’t be Unbroken vs. Fury (Angie vs. Brad working with World War II tales and settings) as much as Unbroken vs. The Theory of Everything (i.e., the hero fires up, goes through hell, endures, transcends a bit). Wild will sink or swim based not on the difficulty of Reese Witherspoon‘s long solo hike, but the angle and the color of the people she runs into. That’s enough for now. I still say the best films I’ve seen this year are Leviathan and Wild Tales.

Last night I tried to explain my sense of frustration about The Leftovers to a guy pretending to be Damon Lindelof, the co-creator of the HBO series. I wasn’t as articulate as I could have been because I posted my thoughts on Twitter rather than in an e-mail. But I made a few points that added up to something, I think. And then the fake Lindelof tried to blow me off or at least denigrate what I was trying to say by addressing me as “Ma’am.” He did so, he later said, because I reminded him of his aunt. But the conversation had merit nonetheless because I meant what I said.

I tried to say that it’s always seemed to me that there’s a huge empty hole in the middle of The Leftovers, and this is due to an absence of awe and wonder on the part of just about everyone in the series, both in front of and behind the camera.

A cosmic event of extraordinary significance has occured three years before the series begins, and in the wake of the disappearance of 2% of the world’s population, it seem as if everyone in The Leftovers is saying “Wow, we didn’t get chosen…that’s fucked up…this feels bad…I guess we’re all spirituallly deficient on some level…shit.” And yet no one is saying “Wow, the religious wackos were right all along! There is a God and a heaven and a scheme of some kind…what a mindblower! Bill Maher and Woody Allen and all the great existential philosophers were wrong all along, and…well, even if some of us don’t wind up in paradise, at least we know for the first time in the history of humanity that there really is a plan and a scheme and some kind of order to things. The term intelligent design is no longer a right-wing slogan. It’s obviously real and serious as a heart attack.”

It’s been alleged that this romantic cell-phone conversation may contain a recording of officer Darren Wilson shooting Michael Brown on August 9th in Ferguson. Eleven rounds — a burst of seven, a pause and then another shot, and then three more. One presumes that the guy firing the weapon, whoever it might be, is either missing a lot (Brown was hit six times) or he has some reason to believe that only one or two shots wasn’t accomplishing the objective. If this is in fact a recording of the Ferguson shooting, something had apparently persuaded Wilson to keep firing like crazy. That or he was just a panicking fool who had no self-control. Mr. Smoothie to object of affection: “You are pretty…you’re so fine…just goin’ over some of your viddies…how could I forget?”