It pains me to say this but George Clooney‘s The Monuments Men (Sony, 2.7) is a write-down. It doesn’t work. It ambles and rambles and tries for a mixture of soft-shoe charm and solemn pathos, but it never lights the oven or lifts off the ground or whatever creative-engagement metaphor you prefer. It breaks my heart to say this. I went into yesterday morning’s screening with an attitude of “if this thing works even a little bit, I’m going to try to give it a pass or at least be as kind as possible.” I feel emotionally bonded with this film, you see, because of my visit to the set last May and that loose-shoe piece that I posted about it on 7.1. Clooney approved the visit and was gracious and cool during my four-hour hang-out, and I feel like I owe him a little kindness. But I can’t cut Monuments Men a break. I’d like to but I can’t.

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Yesterday Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson and TheWrap‘s Steve Pond reported on a firm “either-or” declaration by Toronto Film Festival artistic director Cameron Bailey, to wit: if producers/distributors henceforth unveil their Oscar-bait films at the Telluride Film Festival, they can’t show them during the first four days of the 2014 Toronto Film Festival (9.4 thru 9.14). How will producers/distributors respond? I’d be hugely surprised if they decide to blow off Telluride, which is easily the more preferred venue for award-season kickoffs.

Anyone who knows the game will tell you that Toronto is the Chicago stockyards — an overcrowded, market-driven clusterfuck — while Telluride is a serene haven of refined taste and film-nerd worship — the ideal launch for any film that needs the right people to see it and embrace it (or at least thoughtfully kick it around) and begin the conversation.

Toronto’s “uh-oh” bell sounded last August when the reps of J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost, Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis and Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska decided to preemptively cast their lot with Telluride and sidestep Toronto. Bailey didn’t have to threaten them by withdrawing TIFF slots during the first four days — they decided to ignore Toronto altogether. This initiated what I called “a relatively new fall-festival phenomenon — the Oscar-contending, Telluride-preferring, Toronto-blowoff movie.”

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Two days ago a Daily Beast article by Curb Your Enthusiasm exec producer and documentarian Robert Weide (Woody Allen: A Documentary) appeared about the Woody Allen vs. Mia Farrow legal brouhaha of 20-plus years ago. I finally read it last night. Weide’s piece throws contrary light upon recent post-Golden Globe awards tweets by Mia and her son Ronan Farrow that re-accused Allen of having once had inappropriate contact with the now 28 year-old Malone (formerly Dylan) Farrow when she was seven. In so doing Weide’s article challenges Maureen Orth‘s November 2013 Vanity Fair piece about the incident and the investigation that followed. Conclude what you want, but Weide’s piece strikes me as a thorough, exacting, highly intelligent and fair-minded assessment of the whole unfortunate magilla.

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I don’t know the particulars but I’ve just been informed by publicist Alan Meier that Red Granite‘s Joey McFarland and Riza Aziz, producers of The Wolf of Wall Street (along with Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio and Emma Tillinger Koskoff), are confirming that the forthcoming Wolf Bluray/DVD will not contain a four-hour director’s cut version, and that the film will be released on home video precisely as it was seen in theaters.

Why did a 1.27 Daily Mail story by James Desborough say otherwise? Why did McFarland and Aziz allegedly convey to Desborough, during an “exclusive” chat at last weekend’s Directors Guild of America awards, that a four-hour version was in the cards? Possible explanations: (a) Desborough made the story up out of whole cloth, (b) McFarland-Aziz were speaking wishfully and presumptuously, (c) McFarland-Aziz lied through their teeth for the sheer perverse thrill of it, or (d) flesh-colored humanoid aliens from the planet Trafalmadore pretended to be McFarland-Aziz and told Desborough a lie for the sheer perverse thrill of it.

Right out of the effing blue, Tom Sherak — the former AMPAS president, Revolution Studios honcho and 20th Century Fox distribution chief — has died of prostate cancer at age 68. Earnest condolences and hugs to all who knew and worked with and loved him. Tom was a brilliant player, a wise strategist, a consummate diplomat. He knew the ropes and always told the truth if you asked for it. He was kind and genuine and straight. I’m very, very sorry to hear this. A shock, a wallop.

Tom Sherak (1946 – 2014)

Tom came out to my film class (i.e., Hot-Shot Movies) in ’96 to talk about The Crucible and marketing movies, and the audience loved him because he sounded like an unpretentious regular-type guy. A subscriber who attended that night told me that Sherak “was really cool because he talked like Joe Pesci…he didn’t talk like some smooth know-it-all.”

In ’94 or thereabouts Sherak inadvertently gave me a tough but valuable assessment of my phone manner. I was a reporter for Entertainment Weekly and the L.A. Times Syndicate at the time, and I sometimes tended to be a little pushy with my questions. At the end of one chat we said our goodbyes and then for some reason I didn’t hang up right away. Sherak didn’t either. I heard his assistant say something about my pushy manner, and Tom said, “I know, I know — he doesn’t listen.” Wow! That hurt my feelings but guess what? I listened. From that moment I resolved to turn down the aggression and adopt the manner of a priest in a confessional. From then on I was determined that no one would ever again say I’m a pushy asshole. So thank you, Tom, for helping me to be a slightly better journalist and perhaps a better person.

A little more than 11 years ago Variety‘s Pete Hammond wrote a somewhat dismissive piece about the Oscar blogging hotshots of ’02 — The Hot Button‘s David Poland, Oscar Watch‘s Sasha Stone, Movie Poop Shoot‘s Jeffrey Wells, the L.A. Times-affiliated Gold Derby, Fox.com‘s Roger Friedman.

Several of these articles, which could be condensed as “dead-tree media reporter looks askance at online whippersnappers,” popped up in those early days, but Hammond’s was one of the first. The beef was that the authors of these sites didn’t sound enough like John Horn or Claudia Eller or Gregg Kilday or Bernie Weinraub. They offered too much scattershot opinion and personality and weren’t objective enough.

“Oscar prognosticators on the web are multiplying as fast as studio remakes, but does anyone actually pay attention to these self-styled experts?,” it began. “Welcome to the new world of cyber-Oscar and the tangled web he is weaving, where one day Chicago is the picture to beat and the next day it’s ‘fading fast,’ all before it even hits theaters.

“Objectivity clearly isn’t the goal for these site hosts, who freely mix personal opinions with plants from publicists and filmmakers.

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I don’t know how long it’s been de rigeur for U.S. theatres to run about 20 minutes worth of trailers and ads before a film. I seem to recall that the norm was more like 10 to 12 minutes a decade ago. I know that two and half years ago I linked to Marshall Fine‘s complaint about having been subjected to 20 minutes’ worth of ads and trailers at a New York-area AMC theatre. I reported in the same piece that I sat through 27 minutes worth of trailers and consumer ads before seeing Very Bad Trip 2 at the Pathe Wepler in Paris.

The latest assessment is contained in a just-posted Hollywood Reporter story about exhibitors caling for shorter trailers. Reporter Pamela McClintock states that “it’s not uncommon for many circuits to play seven or eight trailers before a film [which] translates to 17.5 minutes to 20 minutes, on top of in-house advertising.”

Trailers are aimed at the lowest common denominator, which is why they’re generally artless, numbing and often depressing. (Intriguing trailers pop up but very infrequently.) Run-of-the-mill trailers mainly convince you not to see a film rather than vice versa. By the time you’re sat through 20 minutes of trailer torture you’re much less open and receptive to whatever the feature may hold. And you’re paying for this. You’re paying $12 to $15 a head to be turned off and numbed out.

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On top of Gawker’s spirited rebuttal to Quentin Tarantino‘s lawsuit over the Hateful Eight brouhaha (i.e., “contributory copyright infringement for linking to a site that is being sued for direct copyright infringement”), MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough — a longtime critic of Tarantino’s shovelling of ironic high-style violence in his films — stood behind the website this morning. “I don’t even understand that story,” Scarborough said. “Who’s going to sue Gawker? Let Gawker be Gawker. Leave Gawker alone.” Translation: Fuck Tarantino and the violent horse he’s been riding around on for years. He’s an irresponsible pusher of pornographic violence. Let him twist in the wind. [A clip of Scarborough trashing Tarantino after the jump.]

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“I couldn’t understand the words. I wanted to hear the words. It was a great song, ‘Maggie’s Farm’, and the sound was distorted. I ran over to the guy at the controls and shouted, ‘Fix the sound so you can hear the words.’ He hollered back, ‘This is the way they want it.’ I said ‘Damn it, if I had an axe, I’d cut the cable right now.’ But I was at fault. I was the emcee, and I could have said to the part of the crowd that booed Bob, ‘You didn’t boo Howlin’ Wolf yesterday [and] he was electric!” Though I still prefer to hear Dylan acoustic, some of his electric songs are absolutely great. Electric music is the vernacular of the second half of the 20th century, to use my father’s old term.” — a backstage account of the historic “Dylan goes electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival” episode, as passed along 13 years ago by the late, great Pete Seeger…may he rest in peace.

It happened three hours ago, or around 8 pm. I succumbed to an overpowering impulse to have a grilled cheese sandwich on rye toast. I pulled into Astro Burger (7475 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood) and ordered one, and then sat at an indoor table. Four people were sitting at the table in front of me, and there was some doleful guy sitting across from me. Maybe ten seconds after I sat down Phil Collins‘ “Sussudio” started playing. (The booth tables all have those little old-fashioned ’50s-style jukeboxes.) I suspected that somebody at the four-person table had played it because — get this — a bearded, somewhat overweight, dark-complexioned guy at this table started singing along with Phil while the other three just sat and listened. They were staring down at the table top, for the most part. Expressing nothing. Motionless. One of them, a woman, was very faintly grinning.

The portly singer wasn’t putting a lot of effort into it. He was singing like he was alone in his car, using Phil’s exact phrasing…”Soo-soo-sudio.” I could roll with four people singing along but one guy…? The three friends were so…I don’t know, impressed by this guy’s shitty imitation of Phil Collins that they decided to just…what, listen and absorb? By this point my face was starting to contort into one of my trademark scowls…one of my “what the fuck is going on here?” expressions. Who sings along to a Phil Collins pop song while his tablemates just sit there and listen like penguins, slightly nodding or half-grinning or just appreciating the performance? I forgot about the grilled-cheese sandwich. I’d forgotten why I was there. I stole a quick look at the doleful guy across the aisle and he was also staring at this quartet and making a slight face (or so it seemed from the corner of my eye). Who are these people? And then the song finally ended.

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The Daily Mail‘s James Desborough is reporting that the Bluray/DVD of Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street will deliver a four-hour cut that will be a bit raunchier and more eff-bomby than the theatrical release version. The plan comes from statements made by WoWS producers Joey McFarland and Riza Aziz at Saturday night’s Director Guild of America awards. I’ve asked Paramount reps to confirm — awaiting reply.