Jake Gittes: How much are you worth?
Vladimir Putin: I have no idea. How much do you want?
Jake Gittes: I just wanna know what you’re worth. More than 150 billion?
Vladimir Putin: Oh my, yes!
Jake Gittes: Closer to $200 billion?
Vladimir Putin: Quite possible. I really don’t have an exact figure.
Jake Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can’t already afford?
Vladimir Putin: The future, Mr. Gittes! The future!
Jake Gittes: You need $200 billion to wrangle the future with? Some would consider a billion dollars to be an enormous fortune.
Vladimir Putin: It’s not the amount, Mr. Gittes. It’s the fact that it’s there for the taking and no one can stop me.

An Olive Films Bluray of Billy Wilder’s old-hat, close-to-excruciating Kiss Me Stupid streets tomorrow. No way am I buying or watching it. I’ll watch almost anything in black-and-white Scope, which I happen to be queer for, but I draw the line at Kiss Me, Stupid. It’s not so much the overbearing lead performance by Ray Walston, who was hired at the last-minute when Peter Sellers suffered a heart attack, and Kim Novak is…well, not too bad even though Polly the Pistol is a pathetic character. It’s Dean Martin I can’t stand. He’s playing himself here — a rich, big-name Italian crooner who’s so smug and lazy he can barely say his lines without putting himself to sleep…thinks he’s the center of the universe but in fact is completely out of swing with mid ’60s culture and doesn’t know it and doesn’t care, and who has no funny lines…just a smug, oily-haired lech trying to bang Novak while getting half-bombed.

(l. to r.) Kim Novak, Ray Walston, Dean Martin in a rare color snap from the set of Kiss Me Stupid.

From a 3.27.11 Glenn Kenny Some Came Running piece called “I’m With Stupid: “One thing I find perverse enjoyment in with Kiss Me, Stupid, is its coarseness, or more precisely the way that coarseness manifests itself. It was made just as the sexual revolution was revving up and the studio system was circling the drain. While Wilder’s comic sensibility was always at least partially about pushing a joke or double-entendre past whatever the acceptable breaking point for the Breen Office was, the man himself was in some ways a bit of a prig. His ’60s films were getting more and more frantic, but with Kiss Me, Stupid, there’s an almost palpable sense of Wilder saying ‘screw this.’

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With the Best Picture Oscar nearly in the bag for Birdman, this morning I wrote the usual Oscarologists a question many didn’t want to hear. Who has attempted an honest, warts-and-all, what-really-happened explanation about why so many Gurus of Gold and Gold Derby-ites predicted a Boyhood Best Picture victory for so many months? Me: “Some of you have to ask yourself and your Boyhood brethren, ‘Were we just smelling our own asses the whole time or was there something out there that seriously conveyed that Boyhood was a winning horse?”

This morning Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil and I discuss the current state of Oscar-releated mea culpas and second thoughts in the wake of the Birdman surge.

Only three responded to my letter — Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil (with whom I recorded a 25-minute discussion” about an hour ago) Variety critic Scott Foundas and an entertainment journalist who asked for anonymity.

But first, an excerpt from an “oh, fuck it, fine…Birdman wins!” piece posted this morning by Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, a longtime Boyhood ally who is basically ascribing the popularity of Birdman to old-boy industry narcissism, which is an idea advanced earlier this month by Grantland‘s Mark Harris.

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Birdman‘s Emmanuel Lubezki won the top prize Sunday night at the American Society of Cinematographers Awards at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza on Sunday night. The ASC honor makes it…what, the seventh big guild award for Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s film? Producers Guild, DGA, SAG Ensemble, art directors, Cinema Audio Style and makeup/hair stylists. Whatever lingering doubts there might have been, etc.

I was half-watching and half-texting during the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary special when the all-new Will Ferrell-as-Alex Trebek Celebrity Jeopardy skit began. I put down the phone. It was mainly between Darrell Hammond’s Sean Connery (“whore ads for $40”) and Norm McDonald’s Burt Reynolds, I thought, with Taran Killaim‘s Christoph Waltz a close third. Jim Carrey repeated his Matthew McConaughey Lincoln car commercial bit…fine. Kenan Thompson’s Bill Cosby went over and around my head. Yes, an embed code for the Jeopardy skit happened to appear on the EW.com site, but it really….to hell with it, I’ve said it.

In order to avoid alienating those who believe the earth is only about 10,000 years old and that Adam and Eve had to stay clear of dinosaurs, presumed GOP presidential contender Scott Walker recently avoided challenging this batshit mythology. Or maybe he believes in it. Either way the Washington Examiner‘s Byron York reported yesterday that a May 2014 Gallup poll states that 42 per cent of those questioned said that God created humans in their present form — i.e., no evolution. 31 per cent believe that humans evolved with God’s guidance (i.e. intelligent design, which I don’t have a huge problem with) and only 19 per cent side with Bill Maher.

I would probably enjoy Jurassic World (Universal, 6.12) a bit more if it actually lived up to this parody trailer and delivered an Airplane-like goof. But minus the CG foolery. Nobody’s interested in this franchise like they were in the ’90s. You can’t go home again. I’m not saying the dinos are done, but you can’t re-ignite a spent match. I wasn’t even that thrilled by the Jurassic Park 3D re-release. But you know what still plays? The Lost World: Jurassic Park (’97), which I just watched in HD a week ago.

Presumably a portion of the HE readership was moved to see Fifty Shades of Grey this weekend, most likely as a Valentine’s Day concession to the girlfriend or wife. Here’s my review again, but please have at it yourselves. In the meantime here are my five favorite excerpts from Anthony Lane‘s New Yorker review:

(1) “If the figures are correct, ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’, by E. L. James, has been bought by more than a hundred million people, of whom only twenty million were under the impression that it was a paint catalogue. That leaves a solid eighty million or so who, upon reading sentences such as ‘He strokes his chin thoughtfully with his long, skilled fingers,’ had to lie down for a while and let the creamy waves of ecstasy subside.”

(2) “When Christian, alarmed by Ana’s maidenhood, considers ‘rectifying the situation,’ she replies, ‘I’m a situation?’ — a sharp rejoinder, although if I were her I’d be much more worried about the rectifying.”

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Renowned French-born actor Louis Jourdan, who enjoyed fame and fortune as a romantic lead for a little over 15 years, starting with Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Paradine Case (’47) and more or less ending his run in The V.I.Ps (’63), died yesterday at age 93. Once he became famous he was almost always cast as the continental, cultivated charmer. (One exception was when Jourdan played a baddie opposite Doris Day in Julie.) He kept working for decades after that, and I know he rebounded with a villain role in Octopussy (’82) but I swear to God I don’t remember him in that film. Perhaps he didn’t chew enough scenery or acted too civilized? The Marseilles-born Jourdan began his career in the French cinema in the early to mid ’40s and served in the French resistance toward the end of World War II. His best-known role was in Gigi (’58), a popular Paris-set musical with Leslie Caron and Maurice Chevalier. Following his Paradine Case debut Jourdan’s biggest films were Letter from an Unknown Woman (’48), Bird of Paradise (’51), Three Coins in the Fountain (’54), The Swan (’56), The Best of Everything (’59), Can-Can (’60) and, as noted, The V.I.Ps. The poor guy lost his only son, Louis Henry Jourdan, to a drug overdose in ’81.

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The 2014/15 Oscar season will experience a crashing finale seven days from now, and the Spirit Awards will happen the day before. (I’m picking up my Spirit press pass and ticket tomorrow.) Only two major Oscar caregories are generating suspense: Birdman vs. Boyhood for Best Picture and Alejandro G. Inarritu vs. Richard Linklater for Best Director. Except for the crazy BAFTAs all signs point to Birdman and Inarritu prevailing, but the Oscar blogoscenti keep insisting that the Academy membership is too hazy-minded to predict and that Boyhood and Linklater might pull off a surprise. Maybe. Both are striking first-rate achievements, and if the tide goes against Birdman…well, okay. The Godz won’t be happy but it won’t be a tragedy.

I can only imagine the elation that will spread across the land when Julianne Moore takes the Best Actress Oscar for a performance that everyone respects in a tedious film that almost everyone has either ignored or not even seen. Ditto when Eddie Redmayne prevails as Best Actor (I’ve pretty much given up on my Michael Keaton dream…an up-and-down career, world-class chops and a great Oscar narrative doesn’t count when you’re up against a cute British puppy dog). Double ditto when J.K. Simmons wins for Best Supporting Actor and Patricia Arquette takes it for Best Supporting Actress. And it’ll be cool when the authors of The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Imitation Game or Whiplash win the Best Original and Best Adapted Screenplay Oscars.

I’ll be watching with the usual bells on, of course, but I suspect I’ll be feeling bored much of the time and that I might have a problem or two with Neil Patrick Harris. But maybe not. Bring on 2015, which is looking like a hell of a year.

Best Picture: Should win/ought to win/favored by MovieGodz — Birdman; would win if American ticket-buyers had anything to say about it — American Sniper.

Best Director: Should win/ought to win/favored by MovieGodz — Birdman‘s Alejandro G. Inarritu. Might win and if so that’ll be okay — Boyhood‘s Richard Linklater.

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Update: The Daily Show‘s Jessica Williams posted the following Sunday on Twitter: “I’m not hosting. Thank you but I am extremely under-qualified for the job! At this age (25) if something happens politically that I don’t agree with, I need to go to my room & like not come out for, like, 7 days. That being said I am super not right for it, but there are quite a few people who are! Can’t wait to stick around & see what happens.”

Earlier: HE readers have presumably heard or more precisely been informed that 25 year-old Daily Show correspondent Jessica Williams will replace Jon Stewart later this year. The decision was more or less confirmed a couple of days ago when a clip from Hot Tub Time Machine 2 (Paramount, 2.20) announced that Williams will be sitting in Stewart’s chair ten years hence. Williams is sharp, punchy, brilliant, tall, pointed…a cool choice. Then again most of her Daily Show reports have been, naturally enough, about the perspective of a 25 year-old black woman dealing with sexism, racial profiling and other oppressive cards dealt by old or old-ish white assholes. (Including liberal ones.) And after reviewing some of Williams’ clips this morning, I have to say I felt a slight pause. I’m wondering if even 20something guys will continue to watch The Daily Show as often with Jessica using it as a soapbox to fight the power and redress wrongs for you-go-girls.

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