The easy-lay critics will give it a pass and general audiences rarely consider quality issues, but Brian Helgeland‘s 42 (Warner Bros., 4.12) is apparently in trouble with discerning types. The period baseball biopic has encountered two dismissive reviews out of the gate with Variety‘s Scott Foundas and The Hollywood Reporter‘s Todd McCarthy calling it too self-consciously mythical by half.

“All that effort to get funding and then the rewrites and shooting hassles and post-production struggles and we’re finally about to open and wham…pans from Foundas and McCarthy! This fist is for them!”

McCarthy writes that 42 is guilty of “hyperbole and unnecessary inflation that infects the film as a whole. Rather than letting its hero’s accomplishments and behavior speak for themselves, Helgeland hammers home every achievement and then puts a halo around it, as if anyone won’t get it otherwise. [The film is] pretty when it should be gritty and grandiosely noble instead of just telling it like it was.

“Whether in the deep South or the streets of Brooklyn, life here looks spiffy and well-scrubbed enough to appear in a department store window, while the soaring musical accompaniment seems to be stamping all the protagonists’ passports for immediate admission to that great ballpark in the sky.”

Foundas calls it “thick with canned inspirationalism and heroic platitudes, but only occasionally pushing past the iconic to grapple with the real human drama of Robinson’s life. 42 [is] a relentlessly formulaic biopic that succeeds at transforming one of the most compelling sports narratives of the 20th century into a home run of hagiography.

“[It] remains largely on the surface of things, pitting its Robinson (relative newcomer Chadwick Boseman) against a succession of cartoonish racists and Southern good-old-boys who are either softened by the first baseman’s towering nobility, or completely drowned out by composer Mark Isham’s incessant fanfares.”

Any actress can put on a spirited act on a talk show. The bottom line is that Lilo’s problem is two-pronged — the manic addictive behavior resulting in the refusal of grade-A directors, writers and producers to even consider offering her a decent part in a blue-chip feature or HBO film or whatever. So she’s a prisoner in a dungeon in which she can only perform in sketchy indies and bottom-of-the-barrel junk like Scary Movie 5.

I hate the way L.A. drivers always stop dead when they see someone on foot. They’ve been over-trained by the DMV and it vaguely pisses me off. If I’m standing on a street corner, just looking at the traffic and not even stepping off the curb, some L.A. driver will come along and stop and wait for me to cross. Putz. If I’m standing in a parking structure — not walking down a ramp but just standing five or ten feet from my parked car — an L.A. driver heading out of the structure will hit the brake and wait for me to do something.

Drivers in New York or Paris or London or Rome or Portland are much less considerate, and that’s the way I like it.

It’s recently gotten to the point of impish obstinacy on my part. Now when an L.A. driver stops and waits for me to cross a street or walk down a parking structure ramp, I’ll just freeze and stare back at them. When I do this it’s like I’m saying, “Yes, you’re a very courteous driver but I’d rather live in a world of shit in which I take my chances, a world like Manhattan or Boston or Chicago, and so no offense but I’m going to politely decline your courteous gesture by staring at you until you give up and keep moving. I’m not trying to be hostile but I don’t like to be stopped for. So we’re going to play this game in which you’ll sit there and stare at me and I’ll stand here and stare back at you. It might take five or ten seconds but eventually you’ll give up and move on.”

I’ve been around the track a few times and have learned that if you go out with any slightly past-her-prime actress (and I’m defining that term as any woman in her 30s or 40s who sees herself as an actress by way of ambition or temperament, whether or not she’s won an Oscar or acted in any professional capacity or has wanted to do so but never made it due to a lack of talent or drive or just luck) you’re going to discover or uncover a certain strain of me-me-me-me-me. You have to accept that if you’re seeing an actress it’s always going to be about her. And if you’re not ready and willing to “provide” on a scale that will leave her all but gasping for breath (and even if you’re Charles Foster Kane going out with Susan Alexander or Rita Hayworth), things probably won’t work out. Just prepare for that.

Because a relationship with an actress of any kind (professional, top of the class, imagined, failed, striving, budding) will thrive or deflate or go south or be wonderful or awful depending upon one thing and one thing only — i.e., where she’s at in her head. You have to be considerate and steady and as tender-hearted and unblocked and as St. Francis of Assisi as possible, but none of that will matter if she’s not in the mood to make it work. Forget any of that “little bit me, little bit you, let’s meet each other halfway” stuff. Things will pan out or not based upon whether she feels she’s getting the right kind of deal — a deal that she wants or needs or feels she damn well deserves. Or…you know, if she thinks she can do better.

I’ve been in relationships in which I was the selfish jerk (i.e., it was more or less about me and where my head was at and whether I felt I was getting what I wanted) so I know whereof I speak. Relationships succeed or fail based upon whether the person with the power (i.e., he/she who cares less about the person who loves more) wants it to work, and actresses almost always have the power. Because they’re the ones who are looking to sell their specialness once and for all, who are living large in their hearts and spirits, the ones who are dreaming the dream and are so close to making it happen. Or who made it happen 10 or 15 or 25 years ago and are deeply distressed about the big moment having slipped through their fingers.

Sometimes a thing with an actress can work for five or ten years. Or a year. Or a lifetime. But you have to be bigger or stronger or on some level more gifted than they. And blessed with the patience of Job. Not for nothing do most actresses end up with sugar-daddies when they get a bit older. Not for nothing did Mort Sahl coin the term “actresses and other female impersonators.” Just be rich — that’s all I’m saying. Or be Mel Brooks as you’re about to have your first meeting with Anne Bancroft.

I’ve been on a strict eat-almost-nothing diet for two or three months. I began the regimen by accepting the idea that everything I used to love (breads, pastas, sandwiches of all kinds, hamburgers, chicken salad, gelato, pizza, shrimp fried rice, dumplings, spicy hot dogs, richly sauced Chinese food, deviled eggs, all kinds of potatoes including baked, mashed and scalloped, steak, cupcakes, ice cream and eggs over, bacon/sausage and hash browns for breakfast) was the enemy. Now I’ve gone so deep into that foxhole that I don’t even want to look at that stuff any more, and all I want to eat are fruit and vegetables and yogurt and salads. And an occasional plate of salmon or chicken.

And it’s a good thing. Now I actually feel a bit poisoned if I fall off the wagon and eat something “bad.” The only indulgences are sugarless ice pops and non-alcoholic beer and the occasional chocolate bar and whipped cream on the coffee. Okay, if someone puts a nice tasty steak or a really delicious plate of seafood in front of me I’ll eat it, but that’s a very rare thing. My son Dylan tells me that if I’m serious about dropping pounds I need to manage a 500 calorie deficit per day. Jesus God. But I honestly feel good about abandoning all alcohol. 13 months and counting. For much of my adult life I drank and smoked occasionally (i.e., whenever I was in Europe) and ate mostly fattening food. Now I’m in another realm and I like it better.

Remember when the bald-headed Matt Damon was taped having an impassioned debate with libertarian TV journalist Michelle Fields under a tent in Washington, D.C.? That was in August 2011 and Neil Blomkamp‘s Elysium, for which he had shaved his head, won’t be out until 8.9.13. That’s a lohhhnnnng post-production period.

Part Two of John McElwee’s Greenbriar Pictureshow piece on “The Shane Showdown” appeared this morning. The conclusion reads as follows:

“I understand now that Woody Allen has spoken to the Shane matter in a letter to Hollywood Elsewhere‘s Jeffrey Wells, the latter crusading for several weeks in favor of the film’s Bluray release in full-frame. Greenbriar is in agreement with Mr. Wells, as well as archivists Bob Furmanek and Robert Harris. The latter two are also on record for Shane in 1.37, and have done research to back their positions. Furmanek and Harris are lifelong historians and gilt-edged reliable.

“My own past with Shane amounts to stills/ad art collected, and a banged-up 16mm syndication print treasured from summer 1975 for being IB Technicolor, making its wear and splices tolerable. I would sure have hated losing blue skies from that, and like it or no, sky is part (but only part) of what we will lose if Shane goes out in cropped format. Given that outcome, lots will be crying “Come Back, Shane!” to discarded DVD, laser-discs, VHS, and for myself, that worn 16mm having rode off years ago to a collector who’s luckier than I’ll be once this proposed Bluray comes out.”

Anyone looking to join me in picketing the 1.27 screening of the 1.66 Shane at the TCL Chinese at 6:30 pm needs to meet me at 5:30 pm at a soon-to-be-designated location. I will provide the picket signs. I will also see to whatever permit is required.

The above-mentioned conclusion to John McElwee’s Greenbriar Pictureshow piece on “The Shane Showdown” asks what director George Stevens publicly said about the 1.66 presentations of his film, which was shot between July and October of 1951 at 1.37. Any public statements Stevens may have made are, of course, immaterial. He shot the film at 1.37, period. Anything Stevens said in the wake of Shane‘s April 1953 release can be read as mere political tainted, given his natural interest in wanting Shane to be a commercial success and not wanting to throw any spitballs at Paramont.

Nonetheless McElwee offers a Stevens quote from a 5/8/53 edition of Variety. “New screens to stimulate and hold audience interest must have height as well as width,” Stevens said, adding that “it’s wishful thinking and nothing more to look at the large screen and see in it the miracle that will cure [a given] film’s problems.”

McElwee also offers a 5.3.53 comment on the two versions of Shane from N.Y. Times critic Bosley Crowther, the first seen at a private screening room and the second at the Radio City Music Hall:

“Let’s not be secretive about it,” Crowther wrote. “Shane on the Music Hall’s large screen looks not one whit better to this viewer than it did on the screen of a preview room. For purposes of comparison, we caught the film first in a preview where its handsome display of western drama filled the whole end wall of the small room. And then we saw it in the theatre, where the ratio of the screen was slightly changed — not quite as tall as usual in proportion to the width — and we’ve got to confess the grandeur of it was slighter, if anything.

“Does the moderate enlargement of the screen and the slight alteration of its aspect ratio really do anything to improve the pictorial magnificence and dramatic qualities of such a fine film as Shane?,” Crowther asked. “It is the opinion of this viewer, based on studious observation, that it does not. If anything, the fractional narrowing of the shape of the screen cuts it down. Many of its separate compositions are in the up-and-down vertical plane — just as many are in the horizontal — so the post-imposed narrowing of the frame detracts just that much from the harmony of the vertical image.”

A little before or after 9:30 this morning a loud explosion was heard in my neighborhood. And then the power was gone. Phonetically it was somewhere between a “whank!” and a “whump!” My first thought was either a serious car crash or an Iraqi terrorist exploding an IED. It turned out to be an exploding transformer or juncture box about a block away, or right next to the Urth Caffe. SCE trucks and cop cars and fire trucks soon descended. I’m now filing this from a nearby Starbucks.

First, who cares about DVD boxsets these days? Second, of all the films Cary Grant made over his 72-film career I Was a Male War Bride, People Will Talk, Monkey Business, An Affair to Remember, Kiss Them for Me and Born To Be Bad are easily among the least entertaining. And third, a p.r. release received this morning states that Grant “never played the role of the villain.”

Uhhm, nope. Grant very definitely played the villain in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Suspicion. The finale of the original script (by Samson Raphaelson and Joan Harrison) called for Grant’s Johnny Aysgarth character to give the poisoned drink to Joan Fontaine‘s Lina and for Lina, resigned and depressed, to drink it. But before dying she gives Johnny a letter to post — a letter to friends in which she declares that Johnny has killed her. It was only a last-minute rewrite that led Hitchcock to shoot the phony-baloney ending in which Johnny confesses his sins and abruptly reforms.

I collapsed in helpless giggling when I saw this clip from This Is The End (Sony, 6.12). People tend to laugh when a joke or bit reflects a basic shared insight about real life — they laugh out of recognition, hah-hah, “that’s the way it is, all right!” Obviously Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg‘s film is saying that name-brand Hollywood actors embrace the same elitist values as Rhode Island Republicans. Can you think of anything funnier off the top of your head? I’m on the verge of blacking out here.

I was invited by Sony publicity to a special midday preview of footage from Neil Blomkamp‘s Elysium (Sony, 8.9). I rsvp’ed right away to the emailed invite but when I clicked through on my iPhone it led to an image of some dorky moron that told me to tilt the phone, blah blah. I’ve no patience with apps that don’t reveal information simply and instantly so I ignored it after that. I drove down to Sony Studios at 11:30 am today only to be told that the event was being held at Hollywood’s Arclight. Terrific.

I hate iPhone apps that don’t do what they’re supposed to do. “Why didn’t you guys just put the basic information on the initial email instead of asking people to click through on some slow-moving app that doesn’t work?”, I asked when I realized my error. Then I got philosophical about it. Today’s event just didn’t have my name on it — that’s all.

Synopsis: “In the year 2159 two classes of people exist: the very wealthy who live on a pristine man-made space station called Elysium, and the rest, who live on an overpopulated, ruined Earth. Secretary Rhodes (Jodie Foster), a hard line government official will stop at nothing to enforce anti-immigration laws and preserve the luxurious lifestyle of the citizens of Elysium. That doesn’t stop the people of Earth from trying to get in, by any means they can. When unlucky Max (Matt Damon) is backed into a corner, he agrees to take on a daunting mission that if successful will not only save his life, but could bring equality to these polarized worlds.”