Inspired by a two year-old Sacramento Bee piece by Stephen Magagnini, a Roger Ebert tweet asks “if the term is ‘Asian American’ fading into history, like ‘Oriental’ before it?” That led me to ask, “When’s the last time I heard anyone in a film say ‘Oriental’?” From my perspective, the answer can be found at 2:48.

Movieline film critic Stephanie Zacharek has announced on Twitter that she’s been laid off by Movieline effective 7.13, and that her “Chief Critic” position is being eliminated. Which means what in terms of the Hollywood fortunes and online publishing strategies of Jay Penske‘s MMC, which also owns Deadline.com?

They’re…what, trying to save money? They’re arbitrarily shaving expenses because the books are suddenly scaring them? They seem to be saying that they don’t see the value any more in having film critics as major contributors, and that’s a weird thing to say. It would have been one thing if MMC had decided that they like Movieline critic and contributor Michelle Orange, say, better than Zacharek. But by eliminating Zacharek’s chief film critic job altogether they’re saying that no critic matters that much. Which is a way of saying “to hell with having a critic at all.”

This is what struggling newspaper owners have been saying for years, of course, but MMC is supposed to be a thriving, on-top-of-it online operation. So what gives? There’s a story here. I trust someone will report it sooner or later.

I’ve been predicting all along that President Barack Obama will squeek through to a victory over Mittens Romney, nudging him by two or three points at best and more or less surviving by the grace of God. If he does any better it’ll be because something will drop into his lap that will make him look better to Joe Schmoe, who always votes like a grunting superstitious dumbass.

“The first look at the 2012 FiveThirtyEight presidential forecast has Obama as a very slight favorite to win re-election,” writes N.Y. Times election handicapper Nate Silver. “But his advantage equates to only a two-point lead in the national popular vote, and the edge could easily swing to Romney on the basis of further bad economic news.

“Mr. Obama remains slightly ahead of Mr. Romney in most national polls, and he has had a somewhat clearer advantage in polling conducted at the state level. Mr. Obama would be about 80 percent likely to win an election held today, according to the model.

“However, the outlook for the Nov. 6 election is much less certain, with Mr. Obama having winning odds of just over 60 percent. The forecast currently calls for Mr. Obama to win roughly 290 electoral votes, but outcomes ranging everywhere from about 160 to 390 electoral votes are plausible, given the long lead time until the election and the amount of news that could occur between now and then. Both polls and economic indicators are a pretty rough guide five months before an election.

“While the economic indicators suggest that the economy is growing sluggishly — at a below-average pace of about 2 percent growth per year — it is not yet in recession and incumbent presidents often receive the benefit of the doubt from voters. A favorable precedent for Mr. Obama is George W. Bush, who narrowly won re-election in 2004 under similar circumstances.

“One of the confusing aspects of this presidential race so far is that national polls have often shown a race that is nearly tied — or Mr. Romney sometimes leading — while Mr. Obama has more often had the lead in polls of crucial battleground states. Sites that project the presidential outcome based on the state polls have thus seemed to show a tangible advantage for Mr. Obama, while those that look at the trend in national polls seem to imply that the race is too close to call.

“Any evaluation of the presidential race needs to reconcile this discrepancy. That America is highly divided along partisan lines does not negate the basic mathematical identity that the whole must equal the sum of the parts.”

“Cronos is not in any way a perfect movie, but it’s a movie full of conviction,” Guillermo del Toro tells Mike Goodridge in the latter’s new book, FilmCraft: Directing. “When you make your first movie, whatever mistakes you make are very glaring, but if you have conviction, and I would even say cinematic faith, this also shines through.

“I recently watched Cronos again and I thought, ‘I like this kid,’ he has possibilities. After your first movie, with a little bit of craft, diligence, and more importantly, experience, you learn to make virtues out of some of your defects.

“What I mean is that any first movie has good moments, even if it is not entirely perfect. It can be a filmmaker as famous as you like, such as Stanley Kubrick, whose first film Fear and Desire (1953) is about 70 minutes long and stars Paul Mazursky. It is very stilted, very awkwardly paced, full of stuff that doesn’t work, the actors speak in a patois, and it has a very non-naturalistic rhythm. But what is incredibly fascinating is that the very stilted quality, that artificial rhythm, eventually became Kubrick’s trademark in later films.

“He bypasses it in more naturalistic films like The Killing (1956) and Paths of Glory (1957), but comes back to that type of hyperrealism or strange filtered reality in his later movies, and he is in complete control of it there. Kubrick used the tools he acquired in making other films to transform what you thought was a defect in Fear and Desire into a virtue.”

http://www.amazon.com/Cronos-The-Criterion-Collection-Blu-ray/dp/B0043VUHUU/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1339086738&sr=1-1

Entertainment One Films will open David Cronenberg‘s Cosmopolis in New York and L.A. on 8.17, and then stand idly by as the film commits ritual seppuku among Cronenberg and Robert Pattinson fans alike. For whatever reason Cosmopolis will open over two months earlier in Canada (6.8) and then England (6.15). Is Entertainment One looking to give potential U.S. ticket buyers a chance to think twice before committing themselves?

U.S. Canada border-town guy to girlfriend: “Hey, Cosmopolis opens in Canada tomorrow…wanna cross the border and go?” Girlfriend: “Nah, I can wait a couple of months. Sounds like more of an August film anyway…y’know?”

Before Cosmopolis opened in Cannes the journo buzz was like “hmm, yeah, Cronenberg and DeLillo and Pattinson…who knows, right? Maybe.” Now it’s so cold you could wrap fish in it.

“We all know that Wall Street sharks are the compulsive demons of our time and are probably living with suppressed torment of one kind or another,” I wrote on 5.2, “so going into this I knew it wouldn’t do for Cronenberg to just say that Packer is a beast and show how devoid he is of humanity. The film would have to say ‘yeah, he’s a beast but he used to be human…see?’ Or ‘he’s more than a beast — he’s an alien.’ Or ‘he’s a beast but there might be a way out.’ Something more than just ‘this guy is all but dead, and you’re going to spend 108 minutes watching him be a zombie as he talks trade and devaluations and currencies and fucks hot women.’

“Lamentably, Cosmopolis does almost exactly that. And with non-stop chatter so compact and persistent and airless your ears will eventually fall off. With the same determination that Packer — played by Pattinson with his usual glum, shark-eyed passivity — takes himself down, Cosmopolis talks itself to death.

“I was dying for a little silence, a little quiet outside the limo…a sunset, an empty, wind-swept boulevard at pre-dawn, an encounter with a friend or two. Oh, that’s right — Packer hasn’t any.

Cosmopolis is “too familiar, too regimented, too claustropobic, too obvious. Yes, you’re constantly aware of Cronenberg’s fierce behind-the-camera talent, his determination to stay with his apparently quite faithful screenplay of Don DeLillo‘s book and to not cop out by making a film about how Pattinson’s Eric Packer used to be human but is now an alien although there might be a way out. That’s not the Cronenberg way. He gives it to you his way, and you just have to sit there and take it.”

Whether in Prague or Cannes or Bumblefuck, I have my New York attitude about crossing streets. If traffic is heavy and somewhat aggressive then don’t be an idiot. But if you can make it across a street without getting clipped or causing anyone to slam on their brakes, fine. If a car stops to let you cross, fine. If nobody stops and you have to duck and weave and dodge like a rabbit, fine. I don’t expect traffic laws to protect me because some people are nuts when they drive. I’ll take what comes, play what’s dealt. For I am lithe like a cat. And when you know that, nothing else matters.

Ioncinema has posted an exclusive clip from Todd Solondz‘s Dark Horse (6.8). Synopsis: “A man-child (Jordan Gelber) falls in love with a similarly unstable woman (Selma Blair). Living with his parents, (Christopher Walken, Mia Farrow), he starts an odd romance with the emotionally numbed young woman, while alternately developing an odd relationship with his father’s secretary (Donna Murphy).”.

Last night Manhattan-media wise guy and Forbes/Daily contributor Bill McCuddy “saw what was technically the New York premiere for Rock Of Ages at the Sunshine, and not only did I love it but it played like gangbusters in the room. Some applause breaks after a few numbers. Nice round of applause at the end. Plenty of laughs in the right places all throughout the film.

“Okay, so Julianne Hough was there with her family and director Adam Shankman encouraged hooting and hollering before the screening. But this thing just really works on a ‘campy rock and roll good time’ level. Hough called it a ‘dude-sical’ because men will like it too. I don’t think my poker game will go alone, but any guy going with his wife or girlfriend won’t regret the ride.

“Publicist Peggy Siegal avoided packing the room with stuffed-shirt media types” — McCuddy means guys like me — “and had lots of aging rockers like Mick Jones and younger musical stars like Rob Thomas in the place. Good word of mouth should expand it way beyond the Smash and Glee crowd.”

Choke, gag…the Glee crowd? I’m almost certainly going to loathe this film, body and soul. I’m sorry but I can tell. I’d like to have a good time and I’m glad McCuddy and last night’s crowd enjoyed it, but we all know what it means when the stuffed shirts are kept away. I can smell obviousness and shallowness. I can smell the void.

“And two of the longest french kisses in motion picture history — one of which Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity will look away from — are effing hilarious,” McCuddy continues. “And the Tom Cruise haters can stay home because this is the most fun he’s had since Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder.”

“By the way I’ve just read that the steamy lap dance between Hough and Cruise was taken out because it was too steamy. It was not in the print we saw. I have to say I don’t know how it would have worked in the story because Hough’s character is devoted to her boyfriend at the club and that scene would have played against her loyalty. Didn’t miss it but then again it was a lap dance so of course I missed it.”

“Django Unchained played the hottest of the three — big laughs, applause, whoops. Popcorn-plus entertainment in an old-Southern setting. Audacious attitude, swagger dialogue, fast gunplay and best of all, a former slave (Jamie Foxx) coming back to the plantation and whoopin’ on the overweight slave master who made his slave life hell. Can’t miss. Big money in all markets, thumbs-up reviews, the whole shot” — instant response when this trailer was shown at that 5.21 Weinstein press preview event in Cannes.

“I had lunch with the great Ray Bradbury on the Disney lot in ’83, a week or two before the debut of Something Wicked This Way Comes. (The chat was facilitated by veteran Disney publicist Howard Green.) I especially recall Bradbury talking about how writing was pure joy to him, and how banging out three or four pages was always the high point of his day.

“‘Pure joy?,’ I remember saying to myself. ‘In what parallel universe?’ Doing HE is actually fun most of the time, and when it isn’t it’s not too difficult. But in the bad old typewriter days I equated writing with digging ditches. ‘I don’t care how successful Bradbury is,’ I muttered. ‘Is he taking…what, happiness pills? Writing is pain. He’s just spewing.'” — Reprint of August 2010 article called “Most Happy Fella” on the occasion of the death of Ray Bradbury.