I would have run the new trailer for Freddy Camalier‘s Muscle Shoals, the Sundance ’13 doc about the storied Alabama recording studio, but the embed code provided by Rolling Stone doesn’t offer pixel dimensions so it comes out all mesed up. [See idiot result after jump.] Sincerre thanks to the tech geniuses at Rolling Stone for their professional assistance.

Nagisa Oshima, the great Japanese purveyor-explorer of obsessive eroticism and dead serious ram-rutting, has died of pneumonia at age 80. His landmark film is/was In The Realm of the Senses (’76), which dove into the churning rapids of of fierce, desperate, no-holds-barred, lose-your-mind-and-irritate-the-neighbors sex and purer-than-pure, slit-my-throat love, was shot with unsimulated sex scenes, and was pretty much the erotic date movie of the ’70s, above Last Tango in Paris even.

And then there was Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (’83), a WWII prison-camp movie about a Japanese officer (Ryuichi Sakamoto) falling madly in love with Major Jack Celliers (David Bowie), a British POW. And Empire of Passion (’78), a kind of Realm of the Senses sequel (from a marketing standpoint, I mean) which I saw once. I recall it being a kind of Postman Always Rings Twice but with the ghost of the murdered husband messing things up for the lovers.

Oshima made 20 films from 1959 to ’70 — quite an output. Between ’70 and ’83 he made five. After Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence he made two — Max, Mon Amour and Taboo — and that was all she wrote. Respect the man. From the early ’70s to the early ’80s he held mountains in the palm of his hands.

Ned Zeman‘s Vanity Fair piece about the making of The Blues Brothers (“Soul Men“) reminds that there actually used to be a thing called a “cocaine movie” — a film that exuded a certain hyperness, a tone of manic extremity. Or a belief, at least, in the legend of same. But how many cocaine movies were there outside of The Blues Brothers and Martin Scorsese‘s New York, New York? I’m asking.

The best depiction of a manic cocaine state is in that running-around-with-bloodshot-eyes sequence in the third act of Goodfellas, but that was made straight.

“What was it about The Blues Brothers that obliterated and suffocated?,” I wrote last May. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the fact that it was an unfunny, over-emphatic, overproduced super-whale that was made on cocaine (or so the legend went)?

“I asked Blues Brothers director John Landis about this wildly inflated, pushing-too-hard aspect when I interviewed him in ’82 for an American Werewolf in London piece. It was over breakfast at an Upper East Side hotel (Landis was hungrily wolfing down a plate of scrambled eggs and home fries). At one point I said that the ‘enormity’ of The Blues Brothers seemed ‘somewhat incongruous with the humble origins of the Chicago Blues.’

“That hit a nerve. ‘It wasn’t supposed to be a documentary about the humble origins of the Chicago Blues!’ Landis replied. But the essence of the Chicago blues wasn’t about flamboyant energy and huge lavish musical numbers and car chases and mad slapstick, I said. And your movie seemed to take that Paul Butterfield current and amplify it beyond all measure or reason.

“Okay, I didn’t literally say all this to Landis but that was the basic implication. (I wasn’t impolitic enough to call it ‘a cocaine movie’ but that’s what it damn sure felt like.) As Landis argued with me the Universal publicist sitting at the table started making ‘no, no’ faces, indicating I should tone it down.

“In any case I mostly hated The Blues Brothers from the get-go, and here it is 32 years later and I still hate it. And now Press Play‘s Aaron Aradillas has written an essay about it called “Cruel Summer.” — from “Chicago Blues + Nose Candy,” 5.14.12.

Consider this future-of-Hollywood discussion from New Yorker critic David Denby. It was posted in May 2008 — four and 2/3 years ago. It simply points out how far and how quickly things have come along since then. Almost all of his technological observations don’t seem as geeky or film-irreverent as they used to (at least to the analog generation), and in some cases they’ve become so-whatters. I myself have become more of a “format agnostic” than I was back then.

Kimberly Peirce‘s Carrie was supposed to open in March but now it’s not opening for another 10 months, or 7 months later than mid-March. Something’s wrong, right? One thing they have to get right for sure, and that’s improving on Brian DePalma‘s bloody-hand-rising-out-of-the-grave finale in his 1976 version. They have to come up with something better.

The most significant aspect of this Sharon Waxman-Steve Pond post-Golden Globes Oscar handicapping video is the tin-can sound of Pond’s voice. He sounds like Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer. His voice has the high fidelity of Paul McCartney singing “now she’s hit the big time!” in the Beatles’ Honey Pie. He sounds like Vitaphone.

The second most significant aspect is Pond’s disinclination to acknowledge the signs and admit that Best Picture-wise, Lincoln is all but finished. Instead he’s calls it a “shaky” frontrunner. No shit? Pond knows that everybody likes or respects Steven Spielberg‘s film, but nobody really loves it and that’s why it’s not winning anything. He knows it, I know it, Sharon knows it, own up to it. Yes, the 1.26 Producer’s Guild Awards will tell the tale.

Ten seconds into the trailer and it’s obvious that Ghost Team One, a Paranormal Activity spoof playing at 2013 Slamdance, will probably be much, much better than Michael Tiddes‘ A Haunted House, which has a thundering 9% Rotten Tomatoes approval rating. However the film plays, the trailer persuades that it’ll be fairly sharp and clever. These guys are funny.

The last film I’ll see before flying to Park City tomorrow is Andres Muschietti‘s Mama (Universal, 1.18), in which Jessica Chastain stars as a gothy adoptive mom. The way to “get” this film is to repeat the title as if you’re producer Guillermo del Toro. Americans say “mahma” with a first-syllable emphasis, but GDT pronounces it “mah-mah” with a faint second syllable emphasis. He almost says “ma-MAH.” Just say it that way over and over, and it feels cooler and cooler each time.

Is it me, or is this “Dining With Barry & Barb” scene from This Is 40 one of the best scenes from the material that Judd Apatow shot, even though it didn’t make the final cut? Apologies for being seven days late but as perverse, lifeless and emotionally shut-down as it sounds, the “expecting and offering nothing leads to serenity in a marriage” rap is at least a novel concept, and one that I’ve never heard voiced in a film before.

To everyone’s surprise it has become increasingly evident that Lincoln will most likely fail to take the Best Picture Oscar. It is respected and liked, but not really loved. And it looks more and more like Argo might take that award. [Note: Apologies for idiotic, now-deleted info posted a few minutes ago.]

It’s not that the BFCA/Critics Choice or the HFPA Golden Globe awards are Academy influencers, per se. It’s the fact they both chose Argo for Best Film and Affleck for Best Director, and that means that Argo pollen is in the air, and they both sneezed in unison. It’s the pollen, it’s the pollen….the pollen is the thing. If the Producers Guild becomes the third organization to go “ah-choo” over Argo, the game is over.

I’m more of an Argo admirer than a lover or worshipper as Zero Dark Thirty is clearly a much tougher and more riveting film, and generally a higher, greater achievement, but if it has to be Argo then so be it. I’d rather see Silver Linings Playbook take the prize for emotional reasons, but I’m nonetheless willing to fall on the Argo sword if that helps, even a little tiny bit, to fulfill my most ardent wishes in this race, which I don’t need to elaborate upon.

I suspect that Bill Clinton‘s Lincoln endorsement during last night’s Golden Globes telecast pretty much decided that Lincoln‘s and Spielberg’s fate, but you tell me.

All kinds of things to attend to as I leave tomorrow afternoon for Park City and the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. It’s hard. A growing sense of bats swirling around my life, wings flapping….flap-flap-flap-flap-FLAP-FLAP-FLAP! Struggling as we speak. Thinking, examining, researching as fast I can. Several phone conversations this morning, and none of them leading anywhere.

I should have posted a link to last Friday night’s Charlie Rose Show discussion of the Oscar nominations by now. N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott; New Yorker critic David Denby (a Silver Linings hater save for Jennifer Lawrence); Slate‘s Dana Stevens and Annette Insdorf of Columbia University. The thing to listen for, as always, are the implied views rather than the stated ones…but you knew that.