Name one film directed by a celebrated director of photography (in this instance Wally Pfister) that became a critical and commercial knockout…just one. Name one successful film in which the lead protagonist (played here by Johnny Depp) is killed early on or otherwise doomed a la D.O.A. — people want their heroes to live and fight and see it through. Name one box-office handicapper who doesn’t think Depp’s box-office power-punch rep (a) was over-rated all along due to the uniquely weird Pirates franchise and/or (b) is definitely over in the wake of the El Flopperoony of The Lone Ranger.

Ryan Coogler‘s rightly acclaimed Fruitvale Station faces the verdict of Joe and Jane Popcorn today, and don’t kid yourself — it’s the commercial response that will either propel this fact-based drama into serious Best Picture consideration or slowly shut it down, depending on what happens. The critics have already toasted Coogler, 26, who has done himself proud and is on the road to a long career. Cheers also to Michael B. Jordan for his vibrant and emotionally varied portrayal of the late Oscar Grant, who was aggressively if accidentally shot by a BART cop after a melee on New Year’s Eve. Congrats also to producers Forest Whitaker and Octavia Spencer. Here again is that footage I took of Fruitvale‘s standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival:

If Nelson Mandela was in good health with prospects for several more years on the planet, it’s fair to say that Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (Weinstein Co., 11.29) might ( I say “might”) be looking at an iffy or marginal response. As things stand, the film will probably…well, let’s hope for the best for Mr. Mandela. Nobody lays things bare in this fashion except me. Backdraft: I saw Mandela live at the L.A. Coliseum in mid-June 1990. Me, my ex-wife Maggie and our two kids, Jett (two years old) and Dylan (7 months).

Just because Phillip Roth and Mia Farrow have admitted to watching Sharknado together…well, that doesn’t mean anything. Passing Roth-Farrow interest means it’s…what, legitimate mock-entertainment? What do they know?

Deadline‘s Michael Fleming is reporting that Middle of Nowhere director-writer Ava DuVernay (congrats, Ava!) has been signed by Pathe UK, Brad Pitt’s Plan B and producer Christian Colson to direct Selma, a feature drama about Martin Luther King‘s historic voting-rights campaign. The effort culminated in the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the heart of which was recently undermined by a Supreme Court decision. Middle Of Nowhere‘s David Oyelowo (The Butler, Lincoln) will reportedly play King. But Selma is now up against Paul Greengrass and Scott Rudin’s long-gestating Memphis, about King’s assassination and the hunt for his assassin James Earl Ray. Which will come out first? Any way you slice it, the second Martin Luther King movie will have a little something extra to prove.

I didn’t pay attention to my invite for the Grownups 2 all-media, and therefore missed the fact that it screened at 5 pm instead of the usual 7 or 7:30 pm. So I missed out — big loss. The movie apparently smells, but Andrew Barker‘s Variety review (“Among the slackest, laziest, least movie-like movies released by a major studio in the last decade”) is a classic. It’s probably funnier than the film.

Getting the jump on arthouse lesbo action before Blue Is The Warmest Color opens stateside, Jamie Babbit‘s Breaking The Girls (7.26, IFC Midnight, iTunes, SundanceNow, Amazon Streaming) is apparently some kind of Strangers On A Train riff. Costarring Agnes Bruckner and Madeline Zima, it’s heing hyped as a “wild and crazy” thriller with hot sex scenes and “a bloody tangle of scheming and murder,” etc. Who’s Guy and who’s Bruno?

Everyone in this Out Of The Furnace trailer looks like they need a hot shower and a hair stylist and a sharp razor. They also need to buy their T-shirts at Urban Outifitters rather than K-Mart. I hate movies about primitive blue-collar guys who drink too much and laugh too loud and always wind up pointing guns at each other. I also hate movies about guys avenging deaths of their younger, dumber brothers and going up against Herman J. Motherfucker with the demonic cackle and chin whiskers and yellowish teeth.

In a 5.12.13 piece called “If Saving Mr. Banks Is As Good As The Script…,” I wrote that Terry Marcel‘s script “is so wise and clean and well-crafted that you can hear Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson say the lines as you read them.” I also wrote that John Lee Hancock, director of the forthcoming Disney film, “is probably the most skilled guy in the business when it comes to giving G or PG-rated or family-friendly material a certain echo-y gravitas.” But this trailer makes the film seem jokier and more comedically cloying than the script I read. Banks, trust me, is not a comedy. But this is what trailers always do — they remove the shadings and subtleties.

I confessed a long time ago to being a Bluray philistine when I said I enjoy “tastefully DNR’ed” classic films, especially those shot in black-and-white. (DNR being an acronym for digital noise reduction or, in Hollywood Elsewhere-ese, tasteful de-graining or digital mosquito removal.) In my mind Universal Home Video’s Psycho Bluray is one of the most beautifully DNR’d films ever released. In any event I’m staying in a new abode with a 60-inch flatscreen on the wall, and I’ve discovered a new Philistine pleasure — watching Blurays of classic black-and-white films on an LCD screen with that video-like, frame-duplication setting that almost makes them look like they were shot at 48-frames-per-second. LCD and LED sets call it Motion Plus or Clear Motion or Auto Motion.

Tell me why I should be even faintly excited about Sam Mendes having agreed to make Bond #24, i.e., Son of Skyfall? I find it vaguely depressing that guys like Mendes, who should be directing films like Road to Perdition, American Beauty and Revolutionary Road (as well as producing films like Things We Lost In The Fire), are having such a difficult time getting their pet projects funded that they take jobs directing franchise crap because it pays well, etc. This is a sign of the times, and the times aren’t good for guys who want to make real movies. Bond #24 will be written by John Logan. It’ll open on 11.6.15 in the U.S.