A big scolding happened in response to yesterday’s Jaws riff. You’d have thought from the comments that I trashed it. I didn’t. I said that Steven Spielberg‘s 1975 blockbuster is “a decent-enough thing,” and it is. I’ve seen it maybe six or seven times. But like almost all Spielberg films “it has no undercurrents so it hasn’t aged all that well,” I said. And I was bitchslapped all around the room.

I’m not calling Jaws a problem film. It obviously isn’t and never has been. But it’s the movie equivalent of a lightweight beach read. Engrossing, highly accessible, fun to follow, entertaining. It’s like a great dinner — zesty, well prepared, exhilarating in a sense — but like all great dishes it fades upon reflection. And it may not even be that. It’s actually more like a great dessert. Made with confidence bordering on swagger (young Spielberg was as good as it got in this realm) and summer-movie attitude, but all you remember at the end of the day are the bits, the tricks, the cherry and the whipped cream.

Add up all the parts and you’re left with a collection of parts. There’s no real muscle tissue, no wholeness, no gravitas, no “things that are not said” and no metaphor other than “uh-oh, life can be occasionally scary or threatening because of the existence of predators…wooooh.” It has several great bits (the severed leg, the fake-looking dead guy’s head, the chumming and the Bruce pop-out, “you’re gonna need a bigger boat”) and that one great moment when Robert Shaw‘s Quint talks about being in the sea with the survivors of the sunken U.S.S. Indianapolis.

It’s just a summer movie that made a lot of money and played a seminal role in the ruining of the great era of Hollywood achievement that began in the late ’60s and ended in the early ’80s. (It took a while.) If you want to buy the Jaws Bluray to have and hold, fine. If it still works for you, fine. I just don’t hold with calling it a great or even an especially sturdy film. It’s merely an effective one.

I never believed the opening scene. I’ve always been impressed by it, but only as a movie bit. I never believed that a shark would pull a naked girl back and forth across the water’s surface so she can shriek and scream for our delectation. (I suspect that shark death is probably much worse and a good deal less cinematic than this.) Again — I’m not putting it down. I’m just saying that like almost everything Spielberg does, it’s jizz whizz.

I always thought that Murray Hamilton‘s mayor character was a little too lazy, exuding a tedious form of small-town corruption. There’s a scene in which he complains to his friends that no one is swimming, and he goads an older couple (both of whom are aware of the young girl’s recent shark death) into wading in. I didn’t believe that for a second.

The scene in which Roy Scheider‘s Chief Brody is keeping an eye on the swimmers is one of the best scenes. And like I said yesterday, the surreal visual effect (track back & zoom in or whatever) is superb — I’lll give Spielberg that.

The woman who lays into Brody for knowing about a shark threat and not closing the beaches is supposed to be the mother of the twelve-year old kid who was eaten by the shark. But she’s dressed like a Midwestern schoolmarm out of a John Ford film, and appears to be in her ’50s.

The scene in which the two guys standing on a pier are dragged out to sea when the pier is pulled from its moorings by the shark — another entertaining scene that is essentially cheap, teasing and absurd.

Ditto the ability of Bruce the shark to pull Quint’s yellow barrels under the surface of the water and to chomp through the cable lines. It’s all to support an idea than Bruce isn’t a shark — he’s a reasoning, calculating, diabolical super-leviathan who’s out to murder and devour with relish because that’s the stuff that the popcorn munchers eat up and talk to their friends about. Again — amusing movie bullshit.

I could go on and on and on and on.

I’m not sure that any Spielberg films have aged very well. He’s the most successful hack who ever came down the pike. I’m almost afraid to look at E.T. and Schindler’s List for fear they they, too, might seem like less.

This morning I had a meditative sink-in outside my Mexican Hat motel room. It was akin to the opening credits of Mike Nichols‘ Catch 22 (’70). It began around 4:30 am — pretty much pitch black. I heard the occasional howl of a coyote, faint but definitely no dog. And then a couple of yelping dogs, and ever so gradually, like it’s done for a hundred million mornings since before the dinosaurs, the light began to creep in by slight undetectable increments, and again the dogs, the coyote and the sinking of the moon.

I waited too long to take this. The Canon always adds light that isn’t there.

I wrote the guy (i.e., “bobfilm”) who tipped me about last night’s Master screening at the Aero and asked “were you there?” and “whadja hear?” It’s now 4:49 am and he’s written back as follows: “I’m still digesting everything I saw, but it was pretty amazing. It was like a strange fever dream. [But] not audience friendly AT ALL. An ambiguous ending and not one likable character. And without any ‘milkshake’ lines, it probably won’t have the breakthrough that There Will Be Blood had.

“There are three or four scenes between Phoenix and Hoffman that are barn burners. It also containts the best work Amy Adams has ever done.

“Phoenix WILL win Best Actor unless Daniel Day Lewis blows us away with [his] Lincoln performance. This is Raging Bull territory for him. Believe it or not, his performance is stranger than that fake doc he made. The only way I can describe him is ‘animalistic.’ (I think the Master title refers to more of a dog and his master. At least that was the vibe I got).

“The style feels like Terrence Malick by way of There Will Be Blood. Wish you could have been there!”

Here are some brief reactions from a film site called Movie Parliament. Samples: (a) “Amazing…Oscars all over this one“; (b) “If it were me, I’d put them both [Pheonix and Hoffman] in the Best Actor category but if one them is getting the supporting nod, it’s Hoffman” and (c) “Will get nods for Picture. Good chance of winning original screenplay and acting awards.”

“Bobfilm” offered the same lead-up details that Kris Tapley’s guy passed along:

“Yes, I was there. Paul Thomas Anderson was there with his wife Maya Rudolph. I saw him lingering in the back before The Shining started. But I just assumed he was there for the film. So before The Shining, they announced that there would be a mystery 70mm movie projected as a second feature.

“Once The Shining was over (the newly created DCP looked incredible) they told us it was The Master. We then had to wait outside for about a half-hour and then were let back in. No opening titles other than production logos and The Master. No end titles. Not sure of the exact running time, but it was close to 2 hours and 30 minutes.”

It was around 4:30 am and I couldn’t sleep, so I checked the email and found the following from “bobfilm”: “FYI The Master sneaked at the Aero tonight in 70mm after screening of The Shining. Big surprise for the audience.” The fuck? No, really — it apparently happened. I realized that when In Contention‘s Kris Tapley, stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again, posted the same story around 1:58 am Pacific.

So who was there? Or who knows someone who was? What did they think? How did “the room” seem to react? Forget The Shining — what’s with “the silence”? How can any conscientious film lover have seen it and then gone to sleep and not posted anything anywhere? Not even a tweet?

At first I was suspicious, wasn’t sure. The Aero site definitely has The Shining on their schedule for last night. Then I checked Twitter…nothing. And then Cigs and Red Vines, the semi-sanctioned Paul Thomas Anderson site, but they had totally dropped the ball by posting nothing except some post about PTA wanting to show The Master in 70mm around the country. Then I saw the Tapley post, and it partly reads as follows:

“A source at the event tells me that, prior to the screening, personnel announced that there would be a ‘secret screening‘ following the event and that anyone who’d like to stay was more than welcome. When the lights came up after the closing credits of Kubrick’s icy horror staple, attendees were told the secret film was Anderson’s much anticipated opus (which will screen at the Toronto, Venice and maybe Telluride and Fantastic Fest film festivals next month).

“The film is being shown in 70mm, the director’s preferred format of exhibition for The Master and one that has reportedly caused issues in lining up both commercial and festival exhibition. Anderson [was] in attendance along with wife Maya Rudolph.

“Gotta love the guy. He doesn’t go the traditional route. Popping the film on unsuspecting cinema lovers (who else would be at a Cinematheque screening of The Shining?) is pure PTA.

“So here’s to you lucky folks seated in the Aero right now soaking up the latest from one of the best working filmmakers today. It makes me feel even worse that I’m way over here in some Holiday Inn north of Mobile, Alabama.”

Tapley allegedly left for Manhattan a day ago and…why he would me in effing Mobile of all places is beyond me. But that’s what he wrote. Very weird. Update: He’s taking the red-state route to North Carolina, etc. See KT’s comment below.

The Master opens on September 14 after showings in at the Venice and Toronto film festivals, and maybe FantasticFest. I’m sensing that it will also play Telluride based on a source that hinted as much, but it’s mainly a vague notion.

I haven’t yet seen the Jaws Bluray (8.14), but I gather it’s been nicely restored. Fine. The film itself is a decent-enough thing. But it has no undercurrents so it hasn’t aged all that well. Which is the mark of all hackwork — popular or unpopular in their day, but always diminished by time. The fact is that the two-hour “making of Jaws” doc, included on the disc, is much, much more entertaining.

I still think of Jaws as one of the two films (Star Wars being the other) that killed the ’70s and ushered in the infantilization of mainstream movies and murdered the idea of the gradual theatrical break, so no matter how much you might “like” this film, it’s nearly impossible to forget what it is, was and always will be in a metaphorical sense.

But God cherish the memory of the great David Zanuck, one of the smartest, most kindly and most perceptive producers you could ever hope to meet.

My favorite moment is still the zoom-in, track-back shot of Roy Scheider (borrowed from Vertigo) when he realizes, sitting on his beach towel, that the shark has eaten a little kid.

Explanation: Some guy has hacked into my staging software and is changing copy. No way did I mistype and call it Jews, twice. It’s always something.

I might see Total Recall sometime this weekend. Maybe. But I could smell the fumes coming off this thing from the trailers, and I know who and what Len Wiseman is…I know where he lives, and that I’ll never go there if I can help it. It opens today with a 31% Rotten Tomatoes rating and a 44% from Metacritic. Colin Farrell‘s life and career turned around post-Alexander when he stopped drinking and became a character actor. I say “ignore this” — I say “give him a pass.”

I had a reservation to stay tonight at Monument Valley’s Firetree Inn, a b & b located in a wifi dead zone about a half-hour’s drive from Goulding’s. The novelty is that visitors sleep in a Navajo Hogan, a kind of dirt igloo that Navajos have been crashing, praying and meditating in over the generations. It’s a sacred thing so the owner-managers want people who “get” the Hogan experience to stay there — they don’t want trashy, fast-food-eating families with loud kids looking to watch American Idol on flatscreens.

I get that. I wanted to do this. I figured I could do without wifi for an eight-hour period. But I’d never seen a real Hogan up close (to me the word “Hogan” means Hogan’s Heroes) and was curious about the Firetree, so early yesterday afternoon a friend and I drove out to pay a visit.

The owner-managers, a couple in their early 40s or late 30s, were — I don’t want to exaggerate — stunned by our visit. Stunned. They pretty much went into apoplectic shock. Their basic response was “whoa, wait a minute…what are you, a person who’s not scheduled to be here until late tomorrow afternoon, doing here now?” They couldn’t wrap their heads around someone just checking the place out, all friendly and no biggie.

The first thing the bald and bleary-eyed guy said was that “we don’t open for guests until 5 pm.” Nice people skills, pal. And then the woman said they’d recently gotten up — it was around 1 pm — and they were having breakfast. Right away I was thinking, “What’s up with these guys? Who treats customers like tax collectors? Who has breakfast at 1 pm?” When I said we’d just driven over from Goulding’s and just wanted to look around, the woman said, “But that’s so far.” No, I said — it’s about a 25-minute drive. (Which it is.)

Then they went into a kind of silent mode. “How do we deal with these people?,” they seemed to be saying. “How do we cope with this?”

The general vibe was “We don’t do this…people don’t just drop by to check our place out and you’re the very first to do this in the history of the Firetree Inn” — the guy actually said this to me in a subsequent e-mail — “and this is a place of tradition and spiritual worship in a sense, but first and foremost the Firetree Inn is about us…about what we want…and we don’t like people just dropping by before 5 pm.”

An hour later I was back at Goulding’s and writing the Firetree guys and asking if they could find it in their hearts to please refund the $200 and change that I’d sent them in advance. “You didn’t like me dropping by,” I wrote, ” and I didn’t like that you didn’t like this. So let’s agree to dislike each other. This happens occasionally. Not everything is a fit. You’re okay, I’m okay, we’re all okay. Peace?” They agreed and sent the refund immediately.

I’ll be staying this evening at the San Juan Inn in Mexican Hat.

“Ruthless, ogre-ish, heavily-armed invaders descend from the sky, take over the reins of government, and before you know it rebel groups are forming into grass-roots militias, fighting back like proud guerillas and asserting their nativist rights — this is our country! Death to the invaders! Does this remind anyone of anything?” — posted five years ago upon the DVD “Collector’s Edition” release of John Milius‘s Red Dawn (’84).

The “Russian commie invaders invading and taking over the U.S.” fantasy peaked in the ’50s. Milius’s 1984 film came so late in the cycle that a cycle didn’t exist, but you could just just barely roll with it…just. North Koreans are thought to be militant and crazy enough, I suppose, but the basic idea seems ludicrous.

I’ve chosen not to make time for the 2012 Olympics, thanks. At best I’ll catch the late-night or BBC or Today show sum-ups. But even I, uploading MV photos in a motel room, saw the Gabby Douglas gymnastics triumph last night, and I couldn’t be dispassionate. You just knew she’d win. Superb form, pretty face, elfin (4′ 11″), killer smile and…did you notice?… exquisite eye makeup. A torrent of monetary favorings await. She needs to keep it classy.

Monument Valley is eternal, of course, but it suddenly got better, deeper and more transporting for yours truly late this afternoon. A Navajo guide named Larry took us out around 4 pm Pacific, and we bumped around dirt roads and basked in the glory of the place and took dozens of photos and shared a Navajo spiritual moment under a massive sandrock shelter as Larry and his cousin and some other guy sang Navajo songs. It was beautiful. I forgot about the annoying stuff. This land was made for you and me.

I’m sorry but Monument Valley isn’t knocking me dead so far. It’s fine, it’s okay…but I don’t feel as emotionally affected as I was by the snow-capped Bernese Alps. I guess I built it up too much in my head. The brownish-red colors against the green scrub and bright blue sky are as beautiful as they’ve always seemed in those John Ford films, and the huge mesas and chimney-shaped peaks, the wind-sanded cliffs and the general enormity and flatness of the valley itself…whew. But there’s something faintly meh about it. And Goulding’s is way too touristy.