I suspect that one of the things that Paul Thomas Anderson whispered into Joaquin Phoenix‘s ear when they began working on The Master was “don’t be overly literal or derivative but think of Dwight Frye‘s Fritz character in the 1931 Frankenstein…think of his grovelling manner, those gleeful little giggles, the little serpent with the tongue flicking in and out.”

Everybody and his cousin has re-posted the announcement about Sascha Gervasi‘s Hitchcock being the opening-night attraction at the 2012 AFI Fest, on Thursday, 11.1. So where’s the teaser? If Fox Searchlight is smart they’ll re-shoot this longish black-and-white trailer that Hitchcock himself acted in and/or narrated. Just for fun. And why, incidentally, can’t I get the AFI publicists to write me back about press credentials?

I’ve been flipping through the Universal Classic Monster Bluray collection (10.2), and am once again reminded of the Bride of Frankenstein weight problem. The face of Boris Karloff‘s monster was almost skeletal in the original Frankenstein (’31) but Karloff had bulked up with hundreds of roast beef and mashed potato dinners and was a good 15 or 20 pounds heavier in Bride, which was filmed four years after the original. Plus the dark under-eye makeup was gone on top of the little bangs.

Yesterday author Richard Crouse posted a chat with Guillermo del Toro about Ken Russell‘s The Devils and particularly Crouse’s “Raising Hell: Ken Russell and the Unmaking of The Devils,” which has just been become available.

“I also wonder whether people will look back on this campaign and say it all boiled down to that 47% video. It is the smoking gun. That it was filmed by a catering staff member, one of the workers of the event, makes it all the more poignant. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like at the end of The Dead Zone when Martin Sheen holds up a baby to protect him from a bullet and that is what brings down his bid to be President.” — Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone in a Facebook remark posted two or three hours ago.

The vision and the details are fine — certainly better than Romney’s — but they’ve been repeated so often that they don’t sink in. But the presentation does. Obama is good at addressing hundreds in the standard booming oratorical style, but his speaking-quietly-and-earnestly-at-the-kitchen table patter is perfect. One thing: why did we keep on in Afghanistan for four years, knowing we’d change nothing and defeat no one?

The current idea isn’t just to beat Romney. The idea is to humiliate him and remove as many of the Tea Party radicals from the House as possible.

The Einstein who cut this Hitchcock Collection trailer together uses clips of Rope (’48) and Saboteur (’42), which were shot in 1.37, with a horizontal taffy-pull effect so they fill out the 1.85 frame. The nameless technician obviously wanted all the clips to be the same a.r. and didn’t think it would matter. Brilliant.

We all know that Chan-wook Park (Old Boy) is a superior filmmaker, and as nasty as Stoker seems to be the trailer tells you right away it’s going to be a class act with killer, precisely composed cinematography by Chung-hoon Chung. It’s obviously a vague homage to Alfred Hitchcock‘s Shadow of a Doubt with Matthew Goode playing “Uncle Charlie,” although Mia Wasikowska is clearly not playing Teresa Wright — her India character is guilty, gothy and apparently taken with Goode on some perverse level.

I don’t know why they’ve called it Stoker — I thought it was going to be a vampire film (i.e., alluding to Bram Stoker) when I first read the title. The screenplay is by Wentworth Miller and Erin Cressida Wilson. The release date is sometime in March 2013.

Boilerplate synopsis: “After India’s father dies, her Uncle Charlie, who she never knew existed, comes to live with her and her unstable mother. She comes to suspect this mysterious, charming man has ulterior motives and becomes increasingly infatuated with him.”

I identified no one in my description of last night’s sputtering rage parking-lot argument about The Silver Linings Playbook, but Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil has copped to being one of my opponents by posting an explanation and a response. Good on Tom for his manly candor. Here’s a portion of his article and a closing response from me:

The Silver Linings Playbook is “one of those awkward love stories about two social misfits who find salvation in each other’s arms. Arguably, you could say that Silver Linings is thus in the tradition of Slumdog Millionaire or, even better, Annie Hall (both have comedic qualities), but Oscar voters aren’t often smitten with love stories in this race, especially comedic ones. Usually, they believe Best Picture = Big Serious Picture.

“However, the most important quality a winner must have is The Rooting Factor and The Silver Linings Playbook has more passionate fans than the Philadelphia Eagles on David O. Russell‘s silver screen. We saw evidence of that earlier this month during its screenings to critics and industry chiefs at the Toronto International Film Festival, and in a parking garage last night after a screening in Beverly Hills. That’s where Jeff Wells had a pop-eyed meltdown when some of us mentioned the film’s predictable plotting (it’s obvious as hell how the film’s big dance competition will end — and, for that matter, how the love story will play out too).

“But such criticism is quibbling. Overall, The Silver Linings Playbook is extremely well made, deeply felt. It delivers. Of course, it will be nominated for Best Picture, director, screenplay. Twenty of the 23 Oscarologists polled by Gold Derby say Jennifer Lawrence will win Best Actress. With 17 to 10 odds, she’s a virtual shoo-in. Robert De Niro is in second place to win Best Supporting Actor, (6 to 1 odds).

“What was behind Jeff Wells’ meltdown last night in that parking garage? Why does he adore this film so much? I have a cynical answer that will probably get Jeff mad again, but I think it’s pertinent to this film’s place in this Oscar derby. The Silver Linings Playbook is the ultimate masturbatory fantasy of mature str8 guys. They feel like they can have a failed marriage or two behind them, they can even be a bit loopy in the head and cast off by the world, but, hey, somewhere, on some back suburban street, there’s a hot chick chasing him relentlessly, begging for sex.

“Now consider all of the loopy str8 geezers who dominate the membership of the motion picture academy. Hmmm…maybe The Silver Linings Playbook really is out front…and unbeatable?”

Wells to O’Neil: I honestly felt no horndog feelings for Jennifer Lawrence in this thing. But I felt enormous liking for her character’s cut-through the bullshit, straight-talking manner. She is dead solid real and steady and uncompromised every second she’s on-screen. So for me it wasn’t some fuck-fantasy thing — it’s the “I would love to meet a girl who loves me, sure, but I’d really love to connect with a woman who knows what she wants and doesn’t play games or beat around the bush and calls people on their bullshit” fantasy. Big difference.

I loved Noah Baumbach‘s Frances Ha when I saw it in Telluride, and then I dropped the ball by not filing anything. It’s a much faster, sharper and more high-end Girls without the male-hate factor. It has a buoyant Brooklynesque spirit (principally embodied in Greta Gerwig‘s open, vulnerable performance — a slam-dunk for a Best Actress nom). It captures the under-30 thing with exactitude and panache and heart. And it’s probably the most beautifully photographed black-and-white film of the 21st Century (cheers to dp Sam Levy).

I love Baumbach’s description of Frances Ha in the NYFF press conference video [above] as analagous to a kind of basement-tapes movie in the vein of Paul McCartney‘s first two albums after he left the Beatles.

“I had a wonderful time with Noah Baumbach‘s Frances Ha,” Jett Wells wrote at the end of the festival. “A critic we spoke to confided that he sensed a slightly possessive boyfriend element, as director Noah Baumbach and star Greta Gerwig are a couple. But that didn’t materialize, and Gerwig’s lead performance felt like the most genuine I was ever going to see from her — it was perfect.

“Frances Ha has a floating Brooklyn mumblecore pace and vibe, and is about a 27-year old dancer (Gerwig) who is lost when her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner, daughter of Sting and Trudie Styler), falls in with a rich boyfriend.

“You can’t help but compare to HBO’s Girls, but it’s not that at all. It’s not about gross, uncomfortable-to-watch-sex; Baumbach already accomplished that with Greenberg. The writing is sublime, really tight and filled with pockets of hilarious improvised dialogue. The whole house was giggling and adoring Gerwig despite dealing with a 20-minute delay wen the film began without the center dialogue track.”

I’m serious about the cinematography. Frances Ha was captured with a modest digital camera, and it looks an awful lot like Gordon Willis‘s legendary b & w lensing in Manhattan. Really. I honestly found it more transporting than the cinematography in Michael Haneke‘s The White Ribbon.