In Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity (Warner Bros., 10.4), Sandra Bullock plays an astronaut, Dr. Ryan Stone, struggling with a do-or-die situation that’s initially beyond her technical abilities. When high-speed debris destroys a space shuttle she’s manning with two others (including George Clooney‘s Matt Kowalski, a space-flight veteran), Stone not only has to survive with limited air but somehow return to earth — a tough order. In this sense Bullock is playing (I know how this sounds but it’s true) a variation on Doris Day‘s role in Julie (a terrified stewardess has to man the controls of a plane that has lost its pilot and co-pilot) and Karen Black‘s in Airport ’75 (a terrified stewardess has to fly a crew-less 747 before Charlton Heston can board and land it). Gravity is miles above and beyond these two mediocre films, technically as well as dramatically, so I’m not trying to diminish Cuaron’s film by making this comparison. Gravity is a brilliant experience. But Bullock is essentially playing, like Black and Day did earlier, a novice who has to grim up and find inner steel when the going gets tough. And the fact of the matter is that Black, Day and Bullock’s performances are roughly similar with much of the emphasis on “oh my God, I don’t know if I can handle this…what am I going to do?”

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It was announced yesterday that Amat Escalante‘s horrific Heli is Mexico’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. You’ll have to search far and wide to find a colder, more repellent film than this, and I therefore admire the bravery…okay, the resolve of the Mexican officials who made this call. “This is an animalistic landscape, a territory lorded over by serpents and psychopaths,” I wrote after seeing Heli in Cannes. “It’s hugely unpleasant to watch, but I’ll give Escalante this — he shows violence as a brutally blunt and horrific tool. Which is exactly how it feels in real life.”

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A new Montages.no article about Lars von Trier‘s Nymphomaniac reports that while a softcore version will open theatrically in Denmark and Norway (in December 2013 and January 2014 respectively), the pornographic version, for which “the lower part of the actors is said to be digitally substituted with bodies of pornographic performers…will most likely be saved for a Cannes premiere in 2014.” Terrific. If this happens it’ll be highly unlikely that the XXX version will screen in festival competition. “It is not inconceivable that the hardcore version ultimately has to be experienced on DVD and Blu-ray,” the article cautions, adding that “it is still possible that the producers or the festival [will change] their minds.”

What the world needs now is a brand-new Contempt — a film about 21st Century filmmaking that has nothing to do with Jean-Luc Godard or Alberto Moravia or memories of Michel Piccoli or Jack Palance. The focus would be on the pathetic refusal or inability of under-50 filmmakers to submit to even a semblance of realistic period aroma or behavior — they have to recreate all films set in the past according to their contemporary jackoff imaginings and comic-book mythologies. Hence Fury — David Ayer‘s World War II action thriller that is obviously aping Inglourious Basterds. Brad Pitt as Sergeant Wop-Bop-A-Loo-Bop….War Daddy, I mean…and a five-man crew (Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Pena and some guy I’ve never heard of) on a “deadly behind-enemy-lines mission…striking at the heart of Nazi Germany,” blah blah splat.

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This currently-running Burns Family/Pepcid s&…4() an I pot somehow connected with me on some gut level. It’s a!
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A 7.18 Brooks Barnes‘N.Y. Times story reports (a) an attempt by Nikki Finke to buy back Deadline from bossman Jay Penske with the help of a Phoenix-based private equity guy named Jahm Najafi, and (b) an interest on Finke’s part in wanting to start fresh with a new site, NikkiFinke.com, because her Deadline duties have taken the edge off her hammerhead reporting. The gist, it seems, is that TheWrap‘s Sharon Waxman wasn’t entirely off the mark when she reported last June…well, not that Penske had whacked Finke (that was a bit out-there) but that there was serious trouble in River City between them.

“At least in some corners of the show business capital, the Finke-Penske fight has turned into a lurid spectator sport,” Barnes writes. “[And yet] the tit-for-tat entanglement may simply boil down to another example of the corporate difficulties associated with brands that are so closely linked to one personality, especially one as ferocious as Ms. Finke.”

I’m sorry to admit that when I heard of the death of Ken Norton, the first thing I thought was “whoa, the Sammmy-stud Mandingo guy who did the deed with Susan George is gone.” I’m sorry for thinking a cheesy Quentin Tarantino thought. On top of which Norton’s character in that detestable 1975 Richard Fleischer film wasn’t called Mandingo — it was “Mede” or “Gannymede.” I should have said to myself that the honorable boxer who broke Muhammud Ali‘s jaw has died. Norton’s last big fight was against Larry Holmes in ’78. He was only 70 years old. The poor guy hasn’t been in the best of shape due to a series of strokes. He was also hurt pretty badly from a car crash in the mid ’80s. Condolences to family, friends and fans.

“It also seems [as if] Bruce Dern‘s position in the Oscar race is questionable,” Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet wrote yesterday. “Many have issues with him being pushed in the lead actor category, feeling his role is secondary to that of [Nebraska costar] Will Forte‘s, which means both he and Robert Redford are skating on thin ice with some strong contenders at their heels.”

Just to be clear, I’m no Dern disser. I want this legendary actor to have his Day In The Sun. I’m just saying I’m concerned and all-but-convinced that the poor guy will be nudged out of contention if he and Paramount stick to their Best Actor campaign. If he makes it, great…but I worry for him.

Leonardo DiCaprio‘s The Wolf of Wall Street performance “looms large, though the dark comedy nature of the film’s marketing has me doubting its overall chances,” Brevet continues. “Ditto Foxcatcher‘s Steve Carell, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty‘s Ben Stiller, American Hustle‘s Christian Bale and Her‘s Joaquin Phoenix are still unknowns at this point and could quickly climb into the race, leaving Dern and Redford in the dust, and perhaps even Forrest Whitaker.”

Sayeth a friend of All Is Lost: “I’m not sure I follow Brevet’s reasoning about Redford being on thin ice…to use the quote of the week, ‘It’s September, for God’s sake!'”

By using “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’” for the Haute Cuisine trailer, Weinstein Co. marketers have dishonored Christian Vincent‘s film and the legacy of Nancy Sinatra (even if the song heard is a cover sung by someone else). This is a modest and wonderfully un-Americanized film about real-life French chef Daniele Delpeuch (Catherine Frot) and her two-year tenure as the private cook for French president François Mitterrand (’81 to ’95). It is throughly French and a truly sublime foodie movie for the ages. (Really.) It’s basically a tale about a gifted but headstrong eccentric trying to be genuinely creative within a highly political, hair-trigger environment — a combination that obviously can’t last. Haute Cuisine is very carefully assembled and true to the laws of the foodie realm. I was completely engaged start to finish and had no issues whatsoever except for the casting of Jean d’Ormesson as Mitterand — why not cast someone who at least vaguely resembles the Real McCoy?

In the space of less than a week “It’s September, for God’s sake” — a line used by Grantland‘s Mark Harris in a 9.12 piece about too-early Oscar projections — has become something bigger than itself. It’s now a meme of sorts, a metaphor for the increasingly hurried pace and the manic, distracted quality of 21st Century urban life. Five words that protest the relentless onrush of fate, time, biology. Anything that seems to be happening much too quickly and without sufficient warning. An allusion to unwanted haste and impermanence and tumbling tides, and perhaps even to the shocking approach of death — “I’m in the autumn of my years, not the winter…Jesus.” From now on instead of saying “already?” or “do we have to leave right this minute?,” I’m going to say “It’s September, for God’s sake!”

Warner Home Video’s Bluray of John Schlesinger‘s Marathon Man looks about as good as a scratch-free 16 mm print projected on my bedroom wall. Some of it sharply rendered, some of it shadowy, much of it grainy and almost splotchy at times. Basically like the projected image when it opened at Leows’ 86th Street on 10.8.76. Nothing to get too excited about but a decent representation of what cinematographer Conrad Hall wanted audiences to see. Except this isn’t good enough for me. When I buy a Bluray of an older film I want the images to look as good as they did at the very first check screening at the film-processing lab plus a little more. I want a Bluray uptick — a version that would surprise its makers and inspire them to say, “Wow, this looks a bit better than I remember!”

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