A persistent if whispered thought I keep hearing: apart from the sheer brilliance of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Birdman, the affecting naturalism of Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood and the poignancy of James Marsh‘s The Theory of Everything, 2014 feels like a weak Best Picture year. I realize that a lot of people are serious believers in The Imitation Game. I’m not about to do a 180 on my 8.30 Telluride review — it’s smooth, efficient, well-ordered — but there’s a distinct resistance to its avoidance of any depiction of any aspects of Alan Turing‘s private life as a gay man. Quote from a dinner last night among three film cognoscenti: “If Nebraska had opened in this relatively weak year, it would be in a much stronger Best Picture position than it was last year with 12 Years A Slave and Wolf of Wall Street as competition.” The stage is clearly set for some significant, highly charged film to bulldoze its way into the conversation, elbow Birdman aside and take a commanding lead…but what?

Here’s a portion of Wesley Morris’ review of A Walk Among The Tombstones, a ’70s-style Liam Neeson thriller of a superior caste. Some of the critics called it a “dad movie” (assholes) and the popcorn crowd more or less blew it off this weekend in favor of The Maze Runner, although Tombstones managed a moderately decent $13 million and change.

Remember Fury (Columbia, 10.17), that David Ayer-directed war film that was first mentioned as a potential award-season hopeful in an 8.3.14 N.Y. Times article? Fury “promises to be one of the most daring studio movies in an awards season that will bring several World War II films,” Michael Cieply wrote, by delivering “relentlessly authentic” — i.e., brutally violent — “depictions of the combat realm” that “the popular culture has rarely seen.” But an accelerated post-production schedule kept it out of the fall festival circuit. I thought it might turn up as a special presentation during the upcoming N.Y. Film Festival — this could still theoretically happen. What I know for sure is that press screenings are about to begin so tally ho and saddle up.

After she finishes directing and cutting By The Sea, Angelina Jolie will direct Africa, a true-life drama about paleoanthropologist and Kenyan citizen Richard Leakey — a willful, intrepid fellow who seems cut from a similar cloth as the late Louis Zamperini, the real-life hero of Jolie’s Unbroken. Variety reports that Eric Roth‘s script will focus on Leakey’s battle with ivory poachers, who of course are threatening to exterminate the African elephant population. Leakey’s Wikipedia bio doesn’t mention elephants all that much, but it does tell a history of a guy who’s been extensively involved in Kenyan politics and who lost his legs in a 1993 plane crash, when he was in his late 40s. All you have to do is throw in a romantic interest and you have Out of Africa With Elephants. Definite Best Actor potential for whomever plays Leakey.

Liv Corfixen‘s My Life Directed By Nicholas Winding Refn, a Hearts of Darkness-like doc about the making of Refn’s Only God Forgives, screened twice yesterday at Fantastic Fest. My interest is fanned by reports that it includes a sequence in which Refn reads a portion of my Cannes Film Festival pan of Only God Forgives. Dispenser’s Spencer Howard writes that the 58 minute-long film “is as fascinating as it is insightful.”

“Corfixen throws the promo-reel notion to the side by showing Refn’s struggles without resulting to a ‘we are a champion’ mentality at the end. Refn struggles with the technical and emotional making of the film and Corfixen doesn’t turn away, and sometimes leaves her anger with him on camera. No one looks like a good or bad guy — they both come off as real people who are trying to their jobs.

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My preferred Matthew McConaughey MKC Lincoln ad is the one in which he stares down a bull and then backs off from a confrontation. The other one in which he says he’s been driving Lincolns “before anyone paid me to do it” is…well, it may not be bullshit but it sure sounds like it. Both were directed by Nicholas Winding Refn. The spots premiered online about two and half weeks ago; the TV debut was on Saturday, 9.6. What is McConaughey saying at the end of the bull commercial? I’ve listened to it five times and all I can hear is “ankee sahrs.” He’s saying “thank you” something?

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Matthew McConaughey will be tributed at the American Cinematheque’s annual gala at the Beverly Hilton on 10.21. He’ll be helping to raise a significant sum for the organization — obviously a good thing. The other motive, of course, is to raise notions about his performance in Chris Nolan‘s Interstellar (Paramount, 11.7) meriting Best Actor attention. Due respect but the industry is McConaughey’ed out right now. It’s been less than a year since his Dallas Buyer’s Club Oscar plus all that True Detective praise…enough. Give someone else a chance. Incidentally: The idea of an exploratory, time-bending space mission somehow saving the world from its own ecological ruination strains credulity. But the idea of a demanding, all-consuming job stealing decades of family time and causing dedicated pros to miss out on sharing their children’s lives…that is a metaphor people can and will relate to.

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The audio-visual quality of this clip is second- or third-generation, but there are plenty of versions out there.

Before yesterday I had never visited Lake Arrowhead. High in the mountains (about 5000 feet), quite hilly, the scent of pine and wood chips, forests of towering fir trees, about 30 minutes north of San Bernardino. It seems wonderful when you first arrive, but then you start noticing things. Like the absence of sidewalks and bike-riding and general hiking paths — the town is strictly about cars, and big fat SUVs at that. Not to mention the blue-collar, vaguely downmarket atmosphere — you can immediately sense a culture that is at least somewhat lacking in educated, upscale sensibilities. I knew something was up when I spotted a couple of streetside banner ads celebrating the local “heroes” who’ve served in Iraq and Afghanistan. On top of which many of the homes lack architectural integrity and have obviously been built with cheap materials. On top of which Lake Arrowhead Village is so overdeveloped that any concept of charm probably went out the window 50 years ago. In a phrase, the town lacks a certain refinement. People still wear mullets here. This is not a community that would appeal to Bernardo Bertolucci or Michelangelo Antonioni in their prime. Europeans do lakeside resorts with a lot more class and style.

Yesterday’s trip to Deep Creek Hot Springs (just south of Apple Valley and Hesperia off the 15) turned into a comic disaster in no time. I was travelling with two nice ladies who had been there a couple of times before, and yet for reasons best not explored or rationalized they were disinclined to follow a route suggestion offered by Google Maps. They chose instead to head south from Hesperia/Apple Valley on a dusty, unpaved, deeply rutted path that often resembled a desert hermit’s driveway. Common sense screamed that this wasn’t the right way to go, but I kept my mouth shut and hoped for the best. Deeper and deeper into the scary badlands we went, and sure enough we found a nice squishy sand pit to get stuck in. AAA said they wouldn’t help because it was an off-road situation so I had to fork over $350 ($150 per hour from station to station) to pay for a private guy named Jesse to pull us out with a winch. But first we had to hump it back to civilization over hill and dale (about a two-mile trek) in order to make sure Jessie would find us. The whole ordeal took about six hours. No dips in the hot springs. We got the hell out of Dodge and drove down to Lake Arrowhead.

if Jesse can’t do it, nobody can.

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If the editors of this redband trailer wanted to be really cool, they would include quotes from North Korea’s July 2014 denunciation of the film — “terrorism” produced by “gangster-like scoundrels.” They could also throw in Seth Rogen‘s response — “Apparently Kim Jong Un plans on watching The Interview…I hope he likes it!” The North Koreans will never drop the lurid prose or get past their bullshit. They not only have the potential but the absolute willingness to lampoon themselves to no end. Last May their state news agency KCNA called President Obama a “wicked black monkey.”

Movies in service of the “it’s never too late to fall in love” homily are usually shudder-inducing. But as this is a remake of a respected 2005 Argentinian film it deserves at least a fair viewing and, for the time being, the benefit of the doubt, especially with the ascerbic Christopher Plummer trading bon mots with Shirley Maclaine. My first reaction was to wonder if it had something to do with Federico Fellini‘s Ginger and Fred. (It doesn’t.) Then I thought about the differing approaches to aging and “work” by the 84 year-old Plummer and the 80 year-old Maclaine. Both approaches are fine.