To me, the words “Damon Lindelof” attached to a film or TV project are a threat. They don’t mean “this movie will be shit” but they do mean “okay, here we go on the fucking inconclusive Lindelof train to Meanderville.” After slogging through the frequently infuriating The Leftovers I’m convinced that Lindelof isn’t so much a story-teller as a situational explorer. He’s strikes me as this dorky, bespectacled, comic-book-generation guy who goes “Oooh, here’s a cool idea! Kewwl! What if this happened and that happened and then our lead character suddenly realizes that…well, let’s not get hung up on resolutions but this is a cool realm…let’s play with it!”

Lindelof was one of the many architects of Cowboys & Aliens but I’m sure he did what he could to imprint himself upon it, and I hated it. He rewrote Jon Spaihts on Prometheus and I double-hated that one. The Star Trek film he co-wrote was okay, but World War Z was basically a situational zombie slog with no way out, and then came The Fucking Leftovers. Now we have Tomorrowland (formerly 1952) to contend with — a magical fable dream-tale that Lindelof and director Brad Bird co-wrote.

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Eight days ago I was waiting for an IRT uptown train and close to going nuts from a pulsing high-pitched whine that sounded like the cry of the mutant ants in Them! (’54). This morning Patton Oswalt tweeted that an eerie ringtone coming out of someone’s cell phone had the same damn sound. If this was a ’50s sci-fi film, somebody would wave this off as a coincidence. But this is real life. A voice is telling me something’s up.

Alex Gibney and Mick Jagger‘s Mr. Dynamite will debut on HBO on 10.27, and I will call HBO publicity tomorrow and ask to be sent a screener and the odds are that they’ll wind up ignoring me unless I push and beg. Tate Taylor‘s Get On Up was a respectable, hard-pushin’ Hollywood biopic with a tough, fearless performance from Chadwick Boseman (whom I’m sitting down with next week). But you know the Gibney will be the real deal.

Someday soon I really have to visit Wells, which I’ve been hearing about all my life and which my parents visited back in the ’80s. They told me it’s a pleasant little town with a big cathedral. A couple of hours southwest of London. Often described as England’s “smallest city” with only 11,000 residents, etc. It means something when your last name is the same as a village with a 2000-year history. (In ’87 my ex-wife and I once visited a town in East Germany called Lauta, her maiden name. Today I checked to see if there’s a town in Ireland named Kenny…nope.) Back in ’80 I was waiting for assistance in a British Airways office in London, and when I heard the guy call my name something clicked. “That‘s how it’s supposed to be pronounced!,” I said to myself. “You just need a British accent to say it right.”

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Last June I reported that Paramount would open Rupert Wyatt, William Monahan and Mark Wahlberg‘s The Gambler in the “mid to late fall.” And then I missed the trade announcement that ran on 9.5 (i.e., the first day of the Toronto Film Festival) that it’s being given an awards-qualifying run on 12.19. In my Book of Hope and Dreams, this and Clint Eastwood‘s American Sniper are the December disrupters.

I’ve seen Birdman two and a half times but I swear I’ve seen this spooge-on-Mike clip online before, and yet the YouTube posting date says 10.7.14. One question about Naomi Watts‘ “we share a vagina” line and I’ll let it go. It suggests that Mike (Edward Norton), apparently her ex-boyfriend, either continues to poke her at will or recently had that liberty…right? “Share” and not “shared” means he currently has unlimited (or what feels to her like unlimited) invasion rights. I just don’t know about the word “share” in this context. It’s half-funny but another level it doesn’t sound right.

This 14-minute short from Rodrigo Garcia‘s Nine Lives (’05) is one of the most emotionally affecting two-handers I’ve ever seen in my life. I get what Robin Wright (married at the time to Sean Penn) is feeling in this thing; ditto her ex-lover Jason Isaacs. I know exactly what this kind of relationship is (I’ve been there) and these two nail it cold. I talked to Penn about this at a Spirit Awards presentation eight or nine years ago, and he said they shot it seven or eight times (or more…I forget) and finally got it right on the last take. It’s brilliant…perfect…please watch.

I don’t want to get within ten miles of the Stephen Collins situation, but I was struck yesterday by a summation from Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman: “Stephen Collins’ whole career and life are over. What kind of meds are there for this? How can he live with himself? How is that no one knew?” The safe, proper thing is to forget about Collins, I know, but what a mindblower. What can a 67-year-old who’s suddenly regarded as a demonic figure hope to do? Last night’s erroneous report of a gunshot coming from inside Collins’ home added a certain dimensionality to what a lot of people were thinking. He can no longer work in this or any other industry again so what does he do? Collins is looking at a Lord Jim situation squared. I would sell everything I have and move to Vietnam or Laos or Thailand or Myanmar in order to live cheap. And then devote my life to penance and satori. Maybe join a spiritual retreat that requires 100 days of silence and the wearing of robes and sandals and the shaving of one’s head…that kind of thing. Or grow a beard and just roam around and see what happens. Become a dharma bum on a motorcycle. Or maybe a rice farmer.

I love this photo of the Birdman guys (director Alejandro G. Inarritu, costars Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts), but I also like the dummies. I’ve run into these exact same waxworks before. I took a shot of them five and a half years ago (on 3.18.09) while observing filming of Phillip Noyce‘s Salt inside a synagogue on Park Avenue. It’s odd that so many of the male dummies have 1970s hairstyles in this day and age. It’s fine for a few males to have longish hair but times have changed. If I was the dummy rental guy I would do a little re-styling on most of them.

Salt dummies

Robert Welkos’ story about Broadcast Film Critics Association co-founder Joey Berlin being handsomely paid is a day old and I’m still not getting the hoo-hah. I run a small business that survives on advertising from distributors during Hollywood’s annual award season, and the income allows me to live a cautiously cool life with annual travel to Cannes and Berlin and Toronto and elsewhere…a pretty good gig. Berlin and his BFCA cronies run a much larger business (i.e., the annual Critics Choice Awards) that brings in a lot more dough than any columnist on my level. A lot more. Welkos reports that Berlin’s company, Berlin Entertainment, Inc., earned $859 grand in 2012 and a total of $1,851,347 between ’09 and ’12. Okay…what? The last time I looked everyone was trying to skin the award-season cat. Some with more honor than others. Sasha Stone and I do it one way (passionate advocacy), Berlin does it another, Kris Tapley has his own methodology, Scott Feinberg has a slightly different approach, Pete Hammond has his particular game and so on. David Poland didn’t really get into the Welkos story yesterday but he implied that the Berlin disclosures warrant further attention. I don’t see what the big deal is.

All I can say is that I went “oh, noooo!” pretty loudly when I clicked on this story, which broke earlier today. The less said the better but obviously Hugh Sloan has a big problem. Potential victims have to be protected. As reprehensible as the crime in question clearly is, it also seems rancid to post a recording of a private therapeutic discussion that involved an apparent confession.

This first aired on 9.26 when I was caught up in the New York Film Festival and watching no TV. Muslims come in all shapes and leanings and mindsets, but they clearly don’t respect minorities (particular gays) and their attitude toward women is ghastly. They make Mediterranean males, one of the worst sexist-dog cultures, seem enlightened by comparison. Over 133 million Muslim females in Africa and the Middle East have suffered genital mutilation. The Muslim faith is somewhat younger than Christianity, and I think there’s something to be said for the view that they’re currently in a phase that’s roughly analogous to the Middle Ages when Christian religious authority was far too powerful and dominating. There are “vast numbers of Muslims who believe — and they do — that humans deserve to die for merely holding different ideas or drawing a cartoon or writing a book or eloping with the wrong person…rule of law is better than a theocracy.” Sorry, Ben, but not this time.