I couldn’t attend last night’s 6 pm press screening of Destin Daniel Cretton‘s Short Term 12 (Cinedigm, 8.23) because of the trouble and pain caused by Tucow’s Paul Karkas. Yes, I could have gone in to a Zen space and waved away the chaos but I guess I’m just not Zen-enough. All I know is that if Brigade’s Adam Kersh asks what happened I’ll just say “Karkas!”…a name that will live in infamy if I have anything to say about it.

In any event there’s a screening and an after-party for Short Term 12 this evening, both happening in the mid 50s near Sixth Avenue. My problem is a conflict screening of James Wan‘s The Conjuring (Warner Bros., 7.19), which I’ve been very keen to see. Aaah, I’ll figure it out.

Short Term 12 was pretty much the big hit of last March’s South by Southwest festival. From a review by Variety‘s Peter Debruge: “This compelling human drama finds fresh energy in the inspirational-teacher genre, constantly revealing new layers to its characters”. The Hollywood Reporter‘s John De Fore called the film “genuinely moving” and “effortlessly balanced…Brett Pawlak‘s handheld camerawork and Cretton’s unsentimental direction have a frankness that acknowledges the dramatic extremes in these lives without needing to parade it before the audience”. Indiewire‘s Katie Walsh called Brie Larson’s lead performance “an incredible emotional and physical performance, and she’s a whirlwind.”

Hollywood Elsewhere disappeared yesterday around 3 pm Eastern because a mild-mannered guy named Paul Karkas, compliance manager for a Toronto-based domain wholesaler named Tucows.com, shut down the HE domain due to my having failed to update information in Hollywood Elsewhere’s WHOIS registry, specifically my ancient email address (which used to be gruver1@earthlink.net) and my old land-line number which I bailed on three or four years ago.

Tucows compliance manager Paul Karkas.

Yesterday afternoon and evening I left several urgent messages with the Tucow guys, not only Karkas but the company’s CEO Elliot Noss, pleading with them to please take Hollywood Elsewhere off their domain punishment list. Tucows doesn’t have an after-hours helpline and has zero interest in dealing with people like me — they’re a wholesaler and interface only with other companies with whom they’ve partnered or may partner. Nonetheless they were holding the cards and so I wore out my index finger placing calls to them.

So if you’re feeling angry or appalled about George Zimmerman being found not guilty over the shooting of Trayvon Martin, one way of channeling your feelings is to go see Ryan Coogler‘s Fruitvale Station, a fact-based drama about a similar case in which a young black dude got plugged by a non-cop with a gun, in part because the black dude got angry and mouthed off but definitely didn’t deserve a bullet? Is that what’s happening? I’m not denying or arguing with the linkage — I’m just asking if people out there are doing the same kind of math and going “shit, I gotta see this film.”

I’m presuming that the voiceover in this British teaser for Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom (Weinstein Co., 1.29) is Idris Elba‘s Nelson Mandela voice and not the Real McCoy. If so, I’m impressed. The voice and the children running across the wide-open fields and the old man with the white hair. There’s something about Elba that just won’t pop, but this film could change that.

So Guillermo del Toro‘s Pacific Rim is being projected to earn just shy of $40 million by late tonight, which puts it in third place behind the #1 Despicable Me 2 (a film that doesn’t exist and never will exist in my head…it might as well be a swarm of African mosquitoes for all the attention it’s getting here) and the second-place Grown Ups 2. Here’s my 7.8 review. Critical assessments are hereby requested. Could anyone buy the idea of a flying Kaiju? Or a Jeager falling from 25 miles above the earth’s surface and landing more or less intact?

To me, the words in passing that revealed who George Zimmerman was and where he was coming from were spoken in the early evening of 2.26.12, or minutes before Zimmerman accosted, fought with and then shot Travyon Martin inside a gated community in Sanford, Florida. In a recorded call, GZ told Sanford police that he’d spotted an unknown male “just walking around [and looking at homes]…this guy looks like he is up to no good or he is on drugs or something.” Soon after he said the following: “These assholes, they always get away.”

For years I’ve been describing black-and-white Blurays with over-abundant grain as covered in a swarm of billions of silver digital mosquitoes, a.k.a., a pigshit “grainstorm.” I was obviously describing an unwelcome experience. But in his review of the Criterion Bluray of John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds, the last great Frankenheimer film of the ’60s and a kind of adult horror film about a futile attempt to escape from the conformist nightmares of that era, DVD Beaver’s Gary W. Tooze, an outspoken fan of grain, uses my insect-swarm terminology to describe a pleasurable viewing experience. Mindblowing! The lizard eating its own tail and calling it foie gras!

Hell Baby is apparently aiming to be an unabashed celebration of fecal, rancid, sinking-into-the-cultural-slimehole comic values. How fucking stupid do you have to to be to laugh at this kind of imbecilic crap? Special offer for opening-night attendees: If you can squeeze out three loud, super-stinky farts in rapid succession (i.e., within three minutes) you’ll get the cost of your own ticket plus that of your plus-one fully refunded. Theatre ushers will be standing by to verify.

With all the Mad Men hosannahs of the last few years it’s strange that no one has ever recalled that the great Mad magazine ran an amusing musical parody piece in 1960 or thereabouts, right when Don Draper and his Sterling Cooper colleagues were establishing a beachhead. Based on Lerner and Leowe’s My Fair Lady, “My Fair Adman” was a dryly cynical comment about Madison Avenue values in which Cary Grant was more or less Henry Higgins, Charles Laughton played a version of Colonel Pickering and Frank Sinatra was Eliza Doolittle (i.e., “Irving Mallion,” a Greenwich Village beatnik with a beret and a Van Dyke).

I’ve said it 18 or 19 times if I’ve said it once — I’m a huge fan of Guillermo del Toro‘s art when he’s not cranking out a big fat franchise-for-the-morons movie, when he tones it down and reins it in and tries the old subtle-sell approach. The Devil’s Backbone is a sterling example of this and one of his greatest — would that GDT went to this kind of well more often.

If you’ve never tripped with a truly shallow, egocentric asshole, you need to see Sebastian Silva‘s Crystal Fairy (Magnolia, now playing). That sounds like I’m pissing on it, but I’m not. I was actually moderately taken with this little film and not in the least bit sorry I saw it. And I came away with newfound respect for Michael Cera, who shows serious balls in playing one of the most insensitive dipshits in movie history — an almost entirely annoying 20something Ugly American, nowhere and clueless and unable to see a single millimeter beyond his own tedious “here’s what I want” bullshit.

Last night I attended a 7 pm showing of Michelangelo Antonioni‘s L’Avventura at the Film Forum, and once again I had the same reaction that I always have whenever I see a newly restored film there — “This?” It looked fine but it didn’t blow me away, and I know when I see the Bluray version I’ll probably be knocked flat. Honestly? What I saw last night looked no better than the 2001 Criterion DVD version on my 50″ Vizio.

But Greta Gerwig was there, sitting all alone in the 10th or 11th row. We talked a bit after the show. She’s thoroughly spellbound by Monica Vitti‘s performance, she said. Like me, she’s seen L’Avventura six or seven times. This is what women of extraordinary character and cinematic devotion do — they slip into revival screenings of classic films on a Friday night without a boyfriend and certainly without an entourage.