I’m not an audiophile. I’ll probably never own an upscale turntable system. I’ve been listening to nothing but mp3 music for years, and before that music on CDs and cassette players. But I’m considering plunking down $400 bills for one of Neil Young‘s Pono players (which won’t be shipping until January or February) and then forking over even more so I can download Pono versions of all the great albums, past and future. Because it’s supposed to be like vinyl. Because while mp3s offer roughly 5% of the dynamic range of what was originally recorded, Pono music will deliver more than 90% of that. So I’m really thinking about this. Anyone else?

The well-paid cyborg known as Warner Bros. studio chief Kevin Tsujihara has announced an intention to anesthetize if not suffocate U.S. movie culture with 10 superhero flicks over the next six years — Zack Snyder‘s already-rolling Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, David Ayer‘s Suicide Squad (2016…what a whore!), Wonder Woman with Gal Gadot (2017), Justice League, Part One (2017), The Flash with demon-eyed Ezra Miller, an Aquaman movie (2018), a fucking Shazam flick, Zack Snyder‘s Justice League, Part Two (2019), Cyborg (2020), a new Green Lantern movie (2020). Plus another stand-alone Superman film starring Henry “Ernest Borgnine” Cavill and a stand-alone Batman flick with Ben Affleck. There’s also a Sandman movie with Joseph Gordon-Levitt plus Guillermo Del Toro’s Justice League Dark. I hope that the scraggly-bearded, overweight, ugly-T-shirt-and-flip-flop-wearing cretins who live for this CG flotsam will be happy.

With Christian Bale now locked to play Steve Jobs in an Aaron Sorkin-written, three-chapter film about the late Apple honcho with Danny Boyle directing, the rumored plan is to shoot in the spring. Which means it might be released in late 2015. Or not — you never know. But if it happens Jobs will almost certainly become one of next year’s Best Picture contenders. This is the same Scott Rudin-produced film that David Fincher was going to direct until he walked over a compensation dispute with Sony. Leonardo DiCaprio was interested in the Jobs role but “passed to take time off from acting,” according to Variety‘s Justin Kroll. Except DiCaprio is now shooting Alejando G. Inarritu‘s The Revenant under miserable northwestern conditions so what kind of a “time-out” was that?

When I say I can’t stand Asian action cinema? This. Even when presented in ironic meta terms, it’s unfuckingwatchable.

Oscar telecast producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron have hired veteran award-show emcee Neil Patrick Harris (the Tonys and this year’s Emmy awards) to host the 87th Oscar show, which will happen on Sunday, February 22nd. The Gone Girl costar has won Four Emmys and earlier this year snagged a Tony for his musical lead performance in Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

One of the first results of Quentin Tarantino‘s hostile takeover of the New Beverly Cinema, which Deadline‘s Jen Yamato reported about on 9.7, was, of course, getting rid of that damn digital projector and committing to an all-35mm, all-the-time policy. It also resulted in the respectful removal of Michael Torgan (son of the late honcho/founder of the New Beverly) who had managed the cinema for many years. (I posted a recap and reaction on 9.17.) And now recently appointed co-manager Julia Marchese, who’s also been with the New Beverly for years, serving as the face and the personality of that down-at-the-heels establishment, has revealed that QT’s personal assistant and NB superior Julie Mclean has told her she’s “not manager material” and that she’s perfectly free to leave the New Beverly if she wants. This action apparently had something to do with Marchese balking at an order from Tarantino that no one can talk about the new operation on social media. What has happened to Marchese is standard African wildlife behavior. When a new lion takes over the pride, all the cubs sired by the previous lion have to be killed. “It absolutely breaks my heart to say this, but the New Beverly Cinema that have I loved and stood so ardently for — and that I believe so many of you out there love and stand up for — is gone,” Marchese has written on her site.

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I generally regard Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly as a rightwing harridan and a cold-hearted, logic-defying ideologue, but not this time. CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden is obviously too moderate, too mellow, too laissez-faire. He needs to be whacked and I mean right now. Frieden obviously hasn’t taken the lessons of Steven Soderbergh‘s Contagion (’11) or Wolfgang Peterson’s Outbreak (’95) to heart. President Obama needs to man up and get someone with the temperament of Dustin Hoffman‘s Colonel Sam Daniels to take Frieden’s place. Two Dallas-based infected hospital workers now — how many more have been exposed? Mild-mannered bureaucrats don’t cut the mustard in situations like this. The CDC needs a strong decider who isn’t afraid of pissing people off or being…you know, “brutally efficient.”

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Jimmy Fallon goes to all this trouble to film a Goodfellas-tribute promo (the restaurant, lighting, camerawork and Hawaiian-style waiter clothing are perfect), and then blows it with the dialogue snips. Stevie The Sidekick: “Hey, howz it goin’, bada bing bada boom” or whatever…awful. And Hashtag, the Dancing Panda? There’s no sincerity. That’s the beauty of the Scorsese original — “Como sa va?,” “Whassap guy?,” “Took care of that thing for ya,” “I saw that guy, yeah, wenna see him.” You sensed that Henry’s pals, sociopaths and criminals all, really looked out for each other. And Fallon allows for just a little too much lag time between spotting the player and the dialogue. Scorsese got the choreography and the timing just so, and you know how? I’m guessing it’s because he did it over and over and over and over again, and I mean until the actors and the crew were begging to go home.

Yesterday morning The Atlantic‘s David Sims posted a hatchet piece about poor Jason Reitman, who’s in a hole right now because of the double-whammy of Labor Day and Men, Women & Children. Reitman will probably climb out sooner or later but for now Sims has him pegged as (a) “a fascinating cautionary tale” and (b) the new M. Night Shyamalan, “a wunderkind gone sour.” Sims is saying that Men, Women & Children sucked eggs because Reitman “committed the fundamental hubristic error of thinking himself a great social commentator…taking his material far too seriously, [having] lost sight of the humor and humanity of his earlier works. Up in the Air really felt like it had something sweeping to say about the state of our nation, and it did it by telling a personal story. By contrast, Men, Women & Children explicitly criticizes people for having their heads in their phones, but forgets to ground the story in anything relatable.” Everybody drops the ball at one time or another. Reitman in the shower: “Each time I find myself…flat on my face, I pick myself up and get back in the rayaaace…that’s life!”

Quentin Tarantino‘s Pulp Fiction opened exactly 20 years ago today, on 10.14.94. No Tarantino film since has felt as fresh and nervy and perfectly in synch with the times. Where that movie was “at” was exactly where Hollywood and 30ish yuppies and the culture-at-large were “at”…only nobody knew it until they saw it. And then it happened…pow! That was the peak, and it’s been a long slow downhill swirl for Tarantino ever since. Imagine the glory of being Tarantino and being able to say “Fucking-A, I did that,” but also the agony of waking up every day and knowing you’ll never fucking do it again. QT’s next is The Hateful Eight, which I saw performed live in downtown LA last April. It’s so far below Pulp Fiction…I don’t want to talk about it. The reason that the John Travolta-Uma Thurman dance scene wasn’t 100% perfect was, of course, due to the fact that Travolta wore gold-toe socks. I believed 20 years ago and I still feel today that those gold tips take this scene down a notch. It’s obviously not a big thing, but it’s just enough to get in the way.

When Javier Bardem snagged a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing the malevolent Anton Chigurh in Joel and Ethan Coen‘s No Country For Old Men (’07), he knew he’d be at the top of the list to play flamboyant bad guys in big-studio flicks, which of course would mean hefty paychecks. How many paycheck villain roles has Bardem played over the last six and half years? Only one — “Raoul Silva” in 2012’s reportedly signing to play another paycheck baddie in another big-budet flick, Pirates of the Caribbean 5, which will open in June 2017. Bardem and wife Penelope Cruz have two young kids, kids are expensive, they have to put them through college…I understand. Bardem is cool. He’s no Liam Neeson.

Journos who missed the initial Los Angeles screening of 3D Exodus footage on Tuesday, 9.30 (which I couldn’t attend due to covering the New York Film Festival) will get another looksee on Thursday at 1 pm on the 20th Century Fox lot. The exact same presentation will be shown to New Yorkers that day, screening three times (10 am, 1 pm, 6 pm) at the AMC Empire on 42nd Street. Except Thursday’s footage will include more material than what was shown two weeks ago, which consisted of eight scenes that ran 37 minutes.