Like all Wes Anderson films, I both love and feel hemmed in by Castello Cavalcanti. On one hand I love (as always) the Andersonian style…that feeling of dry but immaculate control of each and every element. And of wry humor. Every time you watch any kind of Wessy flick (commercial, short, feature) this element sinks right the fuck in. That’s a very cool and extremely valuable thing, but you can’t let the old “stamp and imprimatur” concept run the whole show. Or is this inevitable once you’ve found them and vice versa? And yet I love the tiny Italian village vibe (I’ve hung in places like this and there’s nothing better when you’re in the mood for quiet soul-soothings), and I like the race-car metaphor and Anderson’s benevolent notion that life can sometimes nudge you away from that vaguely unsettled or anguished element. It’s all good, all serene.

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I might have been a teeny bit harsh on Seoul in my earlier post. Starting around 1 pm I walked around Bukchon Hanok Village and realized that if nothing else, Seoul is a foodie paradise (I ate at a vegetarian restaurant that couldn’t be beat) and some of the clothiers know from display windows. For all of Seoul’s architectural ugliness and enveloping smog, it’s a fairly hip town if you know where to hang. (Like any other city where particular people congregate, right?) My plane to Hanoi leaves in 20 minutes…later.

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God, The Hollywood Reporter guys are really slow at posting these roundtable video chats. American Hustle‘s David O. Russell mentioned having participated in this discussion with Steve McQueen, Paul Greengrass, Ben Stiller, Alfonso Cuaron and Lee Daniels during his American Cinematheque appearqnce last Friday (11.8). I love all these guys except for Daniels — no offense but he’s never impressed me as a director, a personality or a conversationalist. In my book Russell and Cuaron are the kind of Orson Welles-ian shoot-from-the-hippers who are incapable of anything but direct, illuminating, midnight-lightning-flash commentary about absolutely any topic, including which insect repellent is best.

I landed at Seoul’s Incheon Int’l Airport just after 6 am this morning (or around 1:02 pm L.A. time), and I’m on the plane to Hanoi tonight at 6:40 pm.

Seoul is all about traffic and ugly buildings and smog for the most part. At first the milky stuff in the air seems like drizzly, standard-issue morning smog but by noon it looks and feels like the radioactive fallout in Stanley Kramer’s On The Beach.

My first impression of Seoul is mainly one of grimness, to be honest. It’s a combination of Newark, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and the soulless parts of Tokyo (another city that I’m not enamored of). When they built Seoul they forgot to think about trying to make it attractive.

The first thing I saw when I got out of customs was a big Paradise casino poster featuring the smiling faces of Robert “anything for a buck” De Niro. I’m trying to post this as quickly as possibly so I can wander around for two or three hours and take some more photos.

I even had a bad experience trying to get free wifi in a Starbucks here. The software asked for personal info which I quickly provided, and then it turned right around and said “sorry, fuck you, no wifi.”

Seoul is not my idea of an urban turn-on. I’ll probably never return here.

An honest, un-manipulated, straight-from-the-shoulder shot of Seoul Tower, taken at 11:40 am.

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It’s distressing to think that a good portion of the women I’ve “known” have been faking it. But I guess I can suck it in and live with it. I just don’t want to be flat-out told that they were. That would hurt. I’m going to be optimistic and believe in my heart that 80% of the time the noises were genuine. And resolve to do better next time…howzat?

This would be perfect for reading on the 13-hour flight to Seoul, which leaves tonight at midnight. If anyone can slip me a PDF….eternal gratitude.

Is 12 Years A Slave this year’s The Social Network or Brokeback Mountain? Will Wolf of Wall Street be this year’s Goodfellas or this year’s Casino or The Aviator? Will American Hustle be this year’s…I don’t know what American Hustle is or will be or might be. Nobody does. Let’s leave it alone for now.

I can’t find the link but a couple of days ago some guy tweeted…this isn’t a direct quote but it represents the basic gist…that the Likeliest Oscar Winner In Any Category Corresponds to the Level of Surprise, Shock or Feigned Outrage if Said Contender Doesn’t Win. Imagine any nominee in any category and then try to imagine what the reaction will be if he/she doesn’t win. If you can’t honestly imagine people having a shit fit because he/she has lost, he/she probably won’t win. Something to kick around.

The Weinstein Company has persuaded the MPAA to overturn its initial, incredibly lame decision to give Stephen Frears‘ Philomena an R rating, and thereby changing it to PG-13. It was all over the second use of an eff word in the film. (The MPAA will let you slide with one eff but two means an R.) The Weinstein argument was presented to the appeals board by Bert Fields, Motion Picture Consulting LLC’s Ethan Noble and Philomena star, producer and co-screenwriter Steve Coogan.

I wince almost every time I read a Tim Gray Variety report about the latest award-season screening or event. The only fall release he hadn’t done ecstatic cartwheels over is All Is Lost. (A week or two ago Gray suggested that the title sounds too downish and despairing for the make-us-feel-good crowd.) Otherwise he’s been thumbs-uppy about nearly everything. At the same time I understand all too well why Gray and other glad-handers play it this way. If you want those advertising bucks you have to keep things groovy and backrubby. You don’t have to love everything you see but you’d be wise to write your reviews and riffs in a way that emphasizes the fluttery alpha.

Even the auteur-level directors you’ve admired for years will keep you at arm’s length and maybe pass along a complaint or two to the marketing guys if you don’t pleasure them. Even an interest in wanting to talk to an actor you really like and admire, like Nebraska‘s Bruce Dern, won’t pan out if you’re not 100% loving the movie or if you say that Dern should have gone for Best Supporting Actor because if he did he’d (a) definitely get nominated and (b) would most likely win. (Every time I’ve said this I’ve added that it’ll be terrific if he defies the odds and gets nominated for Best Actor — go, Bruce!) But that’s not good enough. Right now I have a better chance of interviewing Vladimir Putin than Dern.

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You could make a Band of Brothers-like miniseries about all the young men who’ve ever suffered and died on a battlefield. Young soldiers fight for their countries, not ideologies or policies or political parties. Any war, any army is grist for this mill. You could even make a case for the genocidal Serbians if you did it right. (Although that would be tricky.) You know what I’d like to see one day? An HBO miniseries about four young Vietcong cadres fighting against the Americans in a seven-year saga, starting with the January ’68 Tet Offensive and ending with the last U.S. helicopter flying out of Saigon in April ’75. No American producer would have the cojones to do this, of course.

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Word around the campfire is that The Challenger Disaster (airing Saturday, 11.16 on the Discovery and Science channels) is an engrossing, well-made docudrama. I haven’t seen it yet, but I wonder if it will mention the ghastly revelation that at least three crew members survived the explosion and were conscious until the shattered crew compartment smashed into the ocean at 2000 mph — a drop of 65,000 feet that took about two minutes and 45 seconds.

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