Earlier today Focus Features hosted a press luncheon at Lucques on behalf of James Marsh‘s The Theory of Everything (11.7.14), the rapturously received drama about the life of celestial physicist Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne), his wife Jane (Felicity Jones) and their struggle with Hawking’s ALS disease, not to mention their extra-marital intrigues. Redmayne, Jones, producer Lisa Bruce and screenwriter Anthony McCarten took turns speaking with journalists at five (or was it six?) different tables. It was all so civilized and convivial. Everyone conversed, listened, minded their manners, laughed but not too loudly, enjoyed the excellent food, etc. Nobody spilled their drink or behaved like a gorilla or said the wrong thing.

The Theory of Everything star Eddie Redmayne during today’s luncheon at Lucques.

(l. to. r.) a portion of Variety‘s Tim Gray, back of Pete Hammond’s head, TheWrap‘s Steve Pond, back of some guy’s head, Eddie Redmayne, back of another guy’s head. MCN’s David Poland is at far right.

My table included In Contention‘s Kris Tapley, TheWrap‘s Steve Pond and Variety‘s Tim Gray. (The table next to us included MCN’s David Poland and Deadline‘s Pete Hammond.)

Theory opens in nine days. The big premiere happened last night at the Academy. Focus’s big mission, it seems to me, is to underline the notion that (a) Theory is indeed a Best Picture contender (most pundits agree) and (b) to convince the guilds and the Academy that it’s a better “eccentric British genius copes with a serious personal problem” movie — richer, trippier, more soulful — than Morten Tyldum‘s The Imitation Game (Weinstein Co., 11.21).

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“’Kit rarely did anything for the money of it. He did things for the ‘aha!’ of it. And nobody could ever convince him he was wrong.” — quote from Cindy Hargrave about her husband, the late L.M. Kit Carson, in a N.Y. Times obit by Bruce Weber, posted on 10.28.

L.M. Kit Carson (1941 — 2014)

The 87% Rotten Tomatoes rating earned by Dan Gilroy‘s Nightcrawler (Open Road, 10.30) makes it easily the best-reviewed new film opening on Halloween weekend. This, of course, means zip to Joe and Jane Popcorn. They’ll see whatever they want to see, quality be damned, and most handicappers are guessing they’ll mainly be attracted to something that sounds more routinely spooky. Maybe Horns (63%) or the Saw revival (48%) or the dreadful sounding Before I Go To Sleep (54%) or The ABCS of Death 2. How do you get through to people who insist on seeing films that will make them feel like shit or at the very least burned? Answer: You can’t. Their minds are on lockdown. Throw up your hands.

New Yorker illustration by Boris Pelcer.

Oh, you could try repeating that Nightcrawler is all that matters this weekend…that it’s manic and furious and reckless, that it’s a high-speed L.A. adrenaline flick you’ll never forget because it feels so damned unusual and perverse, and that it’s spooky in a real-world way, and that Jake Gyllenhaal‘s Lou, a freelance news-video hound, is as much of a generic Halloween-type character as Lon Chaney‘s Phantom of the Opera or Max Schreck‘s Nosferatu.

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The thinking behind HE’s current Best Director contenders is, naturally, more or less the same that led to my Best Picture determinations, which were charted Sunday night. Respect must again be paid to Stu VanAirsdale, the former Movieline editor whose Oscar Index (which ran during the 2010 and 2011 Oscar seasons) is the inspirational model. I’m in a hurry and packing and won’t be posting the larger version until I get on the plane, but this’ll do for the time being.

After last night’s Big Hero 6 screening I saw Jennifer Kent‘s The Babadook, a brilliant, slow-burning psychological horror film made in a kind of German expressionist mode (I was reminded of aspects of F.W. Murnau‘s Nosferatu) and which is significantly more effective than The Shining in telling a story of dark spirits overtaking the mind and soul of a parent and leading to evil impulses. It’s also a descendant of Rosemary’s Baby in the way it takes its time, really burrows into character, doesn’t heap it on too heavily, and relies almost entirely on “in-camera” strategies. Kent needs to say hello to Guillermo del Toro and vice versa. The Badadook is cut from the same cloth as The Orphanage, which Guillermo produced for director Juan Antonio Bayona. I’ll run something a bit longer when my Atlanta-to-L.A. flight is underway. The Savannah-to-Atlanta flight departs at 3:30 pm.

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Suspicions are afoot that Disney’s family-friendly Big Hero 6, a spirited, highly “amusing” animated feature about a 13 year-old tech genius and his fat, care-giving robot buddy, might earn more next weekend than Chris Nolan‘s Interstellar, at least as far as the 11.7 to 11.9 period goes. (The Nolan will have a head start by opening on Wednesday, 11.5.) I caught Big Hero 6 last night inside the trustees theatre at the Savannah Film Festival, and the crowd just loved it. Laughing, gleeful, yaw-haw. I hated it, of course. It’s as smart and funny and “engaging” as a film like this could possibly be, but all super-calculated, corporate-minded cartoons send me into tailspins of depression. And yet it’s very well-made. Congratulations to co-directors Don Hall and Chris Williams for having made a lightweight flick that America is going to have a great time with.

Word around the campfire is that the first Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice trailer is locked and ready to roll. A Batman site (i.e., some 37 year-old overweight guy sitting around in his underwear) says the teaser “will be attached to a November or December Warner Bros. movie and released online around the same time.” Well, Interstellar is a Warner Bros. international release, and it opens on 11.5. Interstellar is certain to attract a better class of geek enthusiasts than those who show up for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, which opens on 12.17…right?

After seeing Interstellar and contemplating the mixed reviews, TheWrap‘s Steve Pond is saying there’s still no Big Gorilla in the Best Picture room, which means that at the end of the day Boyhood, everyone’s favorite chimpanzee and obviously a long-distance runner, may be the last contender standing. Then to prove or fortify his point he looks at the other contenders and goes “yes but no, okay but naah, stirring but not quite.” Then he sticks his foot in it: “I love the exhilarating Birdman, but it’s awfully weird for Oscar voters.”

And with these words, Pond is holding hands and offering solace…speaking to the general community as a kind of understanding counselor…Father Pond in the confessional, listening to and to some extent validating the instincts of slouching comfort-seekers. “I understand, my parishioners,” he says, sounding a bit like Father O’Malley in Going My Way. “You don’t want exhilaration. You don’t want bracing New York theatre energy. You don’t want to know from the new 8 1/2 because — let’s be honest — you probably weren’t that much of a fan of Fellini’s 8 1/2 to begin with. Well, it’s okay. You can feel that way and I will be your voice, your listener, your interpreter, your man on the web…whatever lazy, semi-conscious, cow-pasture attitudes you want to bring to the Best Picture race, you’ll receive approbation and zero judgment from Father Pond.”

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.

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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.