There’s something vaguely irksome about the idea of a group of gifted, name-brand musicians (including Elvis Costello and Marcus Mumford) getting together to perform and record a bunch of “Basement Tapes” songs that Bob Dylan wrote back in the Big Pink days of 1967. (Only 24 songs appeared on the 1975 “Basement Tapes” album, which leaves several dozen that were written or adapted or kicked around back then.) Question #1: Why didn’t Dylan himself choose to record and release some of these presumably cool songs? Because they weren’t quite good enough, right? And yet these musicians are obviously tickled that they’re playing previously unheard Dylan material. Question #2: Is there a reason why I, the viewer, should be tickled or even mildly intrigued? This trailer for Sam Jones‘ Lost Songs (Showtime, 11.21) is nicely done except for a portion around the 52-second mark when the narrator says the doc will include a “new and exclusive interview with Bob Dylan,” and then we see a murky old snap of the Big Pink house (57 Parnassus Lane, Saugerties, New York) but no Dylan footage, and then we hear the Great Man say, “I just wrote what I felt like writing.” As opposed to…what, writing what he didn’t feel like writing? As opposed to being forced by a gang of masked marauders to write these songs at gunpoint?

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On 9.20 director Ava Duvernay screened about five minutes’ worth of Selma (Paramount, 12.25), the broad-canvas ’60s-era civil rights drama, at the Urbanworld Film Festival. It was announced today that a bit more Selma footage — 30 minutes’ worth — will be screened at the Egyptian theatre on Tuesday, November 11th, as part of AFI Fest. A discussion between Duvernay, star David Oyelowo (pronounced “oh-yellow”) and producers Oprah Winfrey, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner will follow. Based on this gradual emergence strategy, one can surmise that the full movie will be press-screened sometime around Thanksgiving or soon after.

Selma director Ava Duvernay, star David Oyelowo.

The only impression that came out of the Urbanworld viewing was from Blackfilm‘s Wilson Morales, who wrote that Oyelowo’s performance as Martin Luther King “is good enough to be in conversation for one of the five Best Actor slots…he embodies King.”

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Alex Garland‘s Ex Machina (A24, 4.10.15) is about a carrot-head computer coder (Domnhall Gleeson) who’s gifted with a week at a lavish country home belonging to his company’s CEO (Oscar Isaac)…great. And then the catch: Carrot-head is obliged to participate in an experiment involving a new brand of artificial intelligence — i.e., a marginally hot-babe robot.

The Scott Foundas quote used in the Foxcatcher one-sheet tells you that if you look closely enough and think hard enough about the observations in this film, you will find a large-scale portrait of a certain cultural malignancy. Or something like that. I have long worshipped Miller’s touch and technique and stylings and I respect this film enormously, but I didn’t derive as much from the film as Foundas did. That said I remain ready and willing to give it another shot.

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In deciding to open the Coen brothers’ Hail, Caesar! on Friday, February 5, 2016, Universal Pictures is telling us to relax and go easy with this “all-star comedy set during the latter years of Hollywood’s Golden Age.” That it’s basically a smart, very dry, typically perverse Coen Bros. entertainment and that’s all. That it’s a Burn After Reading-type deal, an Intolerable Cruelty thing, maybe some kind of Hollywood Ladykillers…whatever. Just leave us alone and we’ll bring the movie out in the final stages of the 2015 Oscar season and you’ll like it or you won’t or whatever. We don’t care. Well, we care but we’re doing what we’re doing because we feel like doing it this way. Principal photography begins in November or fairly soon. It’ll probably finish principal by sometime in January, and then the Coens will have months and months and months to fiddle with the editing.

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“We don’t get many smart big movies. I understand why movies are big, but not why they’re not smart. And by smart, I don’t mean opaque or unavailable. But even as machines these movies are not smart. I did like X-Men: Days of Future Past, but, really, comic-book movies have destroyed the foreign-sales market. But the people want it. It’s an efficient market. That’s why I wish something like The Matrix would come out now — that was an extraordinary film. We need something like that to remind people that they can have a big movie that’s also smart and exciting.” — Director (Michael Clayton, Duplicity, The Bourne Deception), screenwriter and Nightcrawler producer Tony Gilroy in a conversation with Marshall Fine.

Wells response: Correct me if I’m wrong but “big” movies are “not smart” — i.e., fairly primitive with the exception of a relative few — because they’re (a) greenlighted and overseen by studio zombies and (b) primarily aimed at under-35 mainstream moviegoers, the majority of whom are generally understood to be the most video-gamey and comic-book-minded, the most ADD-afflicted, the least dialogue-tolerant and the most under-educated viewing audience in the history of human civilization, going back to the Greeks.

Due respect to A24 marketers but the slogan that appears on the new poster for J.C. Chandor‘s A Most Violent Year is a bit of a head-scratcher. Obviously the result of any earthly endeavor is always in question, depending in part on the particular path (method, approach, strategy, technique) chosen by the players. One assumes, therefore, that the “result” alluded to is death and therefore “the path you take to get there” is the only thing that matters. In other words, it’s not who wins but how you play the game. But death is not a “result” of a life — it’s simply a biological inevitability. A “result” always alludes to an end-game payoff or consequence that comes at the end of a practical endeavor — a winning of an election or a woman, the obtaining of a contract, the paying of a parking ticket when you park illegally, a fatal overdose when you shoot extra-strong heroin, the winning of a world series, etc. But as noted, these things are never done deals until they happen. So the slogan, no offense, doesn’t quite add up. For me. Maybe someone can help me out.

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After leafing through Shawn Levy‘s “De Niro: A Life” last night I dropped in on Levy’s “Junk Drawer of Shawn’s Mind” page and copied a few snaps. The exception is the shot (right below McQueen) of Birdman cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, Michael Keaton in Birdman costume and director Alejandro G. Inarritu. All the rest originate (so to speak) with the Levy page:

Diahnne Abbott, Robert De Niro in 1982

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The legend of Inspector Javert, the dogged hard-ass in Victor Hugo‘s Les Miserables, has nothing on the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, which has again reportedly tried to extradite director Roman Polanski to the U.S. in order to face charges over having jumped bail in early 1978 regarding the Samantha Geimer statutory rape case. The guy who tried to have Polanski flown back in handcuffs last time was L.A. County district attorney Steve Cooley, a Republican, but he left the office in 2012. The current L.A. County district attorney is Jackie Lacey, the first woman and first African-American to serve as Los Angeles County District Attorney since the office was created in 1850. I don’t know if Lacey is behind this latest Polanski maneuver or not, but if she is…brilliant! This is rabid-dog behavior. Obviously there’s no end to the obsessions of the Polanski pitchforkers. These people really and truly need counseling. Along with a leash.

Way back in early February I tapped out a rave review of Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. I did so from my room at Berlin’s Grand Wyndman Hotel during a Fox Searchlight junket for the film. The piece is fairly well written if I do say so myself. It also seems appropriate in this, the height of Derby season, to remind everyone what a superb film Budapest is, was and always will be because…you know, films released in February are sometimes presumed to be not as good as those released between Labor Day and late December. Here it is again:

Rest assured that while Budapest is a full-out ‘Wes Anderson film’ (archly stylized, deadpan humor, anally designed) it also delights with flourishy performances and a pizazzy, loquacious script that feels like Ernst Lubitsch back from the dead, and particularly with unexpected feeling — robust affection for its characters mixed with a melancholy lament for an early-to-mid 20th Century realm that no longer exists.

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Tickets to Monday’s premiere screening of Dumb and Dumber To (Universal, 11.14) are at a premium, but at least I’m on the waiting list. The Farrelly Brothers comedy was set to screen at the Virginia Film Festival but Universal yanked it a couple of days ago. They somehow got it into their heads that the comic sequel would screen only for University of Virginia students and not reviewing press. When someone tapped them on the shoulder and reminded them that any film screening at a film festival is fair game for review, they went “what!?” and pulled the plug. I really loved the Farrelly’s Three Stooges movie and I’m almost certain to like this one, despite the “younger dumb guys tend to be a bit funnier” consideration. Carrey to Letterman: “Once you’ve done a couple of press tours, you welcome death. And I’ve been married a couple of times so it takes a lot to scare me, Dave.”

My Delta flight from Atlanta landed last night around 7:45 pm. I picked up my luggage (a single leather bag) and went to the curb and got a cab. Which is what I always do. And then I piddled around at home and crashed early (10:30 pm), and then got up late (9 am). I worked a bit and then went to the Theory of Everything luncheon and came back and filed three stories. And then a half-hour ago I went downstairs to drop some trash into the bin and I looked over and noticed that my car is missing. Wow. I tried to remember if I’d dropped it off with my local mechanic before leaving….nope. What could’ve happened? I was about to ride my bike to the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station and file a stolen car report when it hit me. I drove down to LAX early Friday morning and parked my wheels in one of those $15 per day lots. Of course! Well, at least I don’t have to buy a new car now. Zoning out on stuff like this used to happen every so often when I was imbibing, but things have been really clean and clear since the sober thing began 31 months ago. Famous last words. Now I have to cab all the way down to LAX for another $45 plus pick up the car. The things I do.