In a 4.5 Indiewire piece about a recent New School panel discussion about “Film Criticism Today,” Matt Singer reports that contributing Film Comment editor Paul Brunick predicted that “the film critic of the future will be more like a DJ in a club…sampling and mixing together reviews that people have written, viral videos, and framegrabs.” If Brunick had said the film critic of the future “will randomly review movies and Blurays, lament the ComicCon-ing of film culture, dabble in political assessments, rail against 1.85 fascists and grainstorms, share personal stories about absolutely anything that happens and sampling and arguing with various film critics while posting videos and JPEGs of cats and Cannes Film Festival happenings and neon motel signs,” he would have…I don’t know, sounded more visionary-like, something.

Copied from “Mostly Awesome People Hanging Out Together.” All right, there’s no “Mostly” in the title. Captions unnecessary except for the top photo.

Francis Bacon, William S. Burroughs.

I’m guessing this was shot in 1955 or perhaps early ’56, or a few months before Montgomery Clift’s May 1956 auto accident.

James Baldwin, Marlon Brando, Joseph L, Mankiewicz, Sidney Poitier, Charlton Heston and Harry Belafonte discussing the civil rights struggle in Washington, D.C., hours after the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which culiminated in Martin Luther King‘s “I Have A Dream” speech, on Wednesday, 8.28.63. All the noteworthy lefties of the day (including Bob Dylan) were there.

Yesterday The Hollywood Reporter‘s Alex Ben Block quoted Universal Studios president and COO Ron Meyer as saying that some of his recent remarks about “shitty” movies were taken out of context in a Jen Yamato Movieline piece from the Savannah Film Festival. Yamato’s article ran on 11.3.11.

Benicio del Toro in The Wolfman

“I was quoted as saying Hollywood make[s] shitty movies,” Meyer told ABB. “What I said is we make some good movies and some shitty movies. [But] nobody ever sets out to make a shitty movie.”

I’m sorry, but that’s just not true. Studio guys decide to make shitty movies all the time if they believe that this or that shitty movie will make money. Even if a studio chief wants to only make quality films no matter what, he/she knows that there’s only so much talent out there, and that Sturgeon’s Law is more or less true — i.e., “90% of everything is crap.”

Actually that isn’t entirely correct, movie-wise. About 5% to 10% of films each year are excellent-to-very-good. The next 15% tend to be seen as okay, fairly good, half-decent, passable. The next 20% are not-so-hot, disappointing and/or tolerable but irritating. The bottom 50% or 55% are outright garbage.

All studio chiefs know that their job requires them to make money for the studio, and that means punching out a lot of Jimmy Dean link sausage and insipid CG Comiccon slop and whatever else might make a buck. Millions of people have no taste in movies. Look at all the dough being made by The Hunger Games, a mediocrity if there ever was one.

“We make a lot of shitty movies,” Meyer said in Savannah. “Every one of them breaks my heart. We set out to make good ones. One of the worst movies we ever made was The Wolfman. Wolfman and Babe 2 are two of the shittiest movies we put out, but by the same token we made movies we believe in. We did United 93, which is one of the movies I’m most proud of. It wasn’t a big moneymaker, but it’s a film I believe every American should see and it showed you what people can do in the worst of times and how great the human spirit is and all that, so there are moments that can make up for all the junk that you make.”

Yamato asked Meyer “what happened with well-publicized financial disappointments Scott Pilgrim, Land of the Lost, and Cowboys & Aliens?”

“Cowboys & Aliens wasn’t good enough,” Meyer answered. “Forget all the smart people involved in it, it wasn’t good enough. All those little creatures bouncing around were crappy. I think it was a mediocre movie, and we all did a mediocre job with it.”

“Land of the Lost was just crap. I mean, there was no excuse for it. The best intentions all went wrong.”

“Scott Pilgrim, I think, was actually kind of a good movie. [Addressing a small section of the audience, cheering.] But none of you guys went! And you didn’t tell your friends to go! But, you know, it happens.”

“Cowboys & Aliens didn’t deserve better. Land of the Lost didn’t deserve better. Scott Pilgrim did deserve better, but it just didn’t capture enough of the imaginations of people, and it was one of those things where it didn’t cost a lot so it wasn’t a big loss. Cowboys & Aliens was a big loss, and Land of the Lost was a huge loss. We misfired. We were wrong. We did it badly, and I think we’re all guilty of it. I have to take first responsibility because I’m part of it, but we all did a mediocre job and we paid the price for it. It happens. They’re talented people. Certainly you couldn’t have more talented people involved in Cowboys & Aliens, but it took, you know, ten smart and talented people to come up with a mediocre movie. It just happens.”

For whatever reason I’d never watched this alternate finale scene from Titanic until this morning. Obviously it’s a little too on-the-nose (i.e, Rose repeating Jack Dawson’s “make each day count”), and it too conspicuously alludes to the uproarious laughter finale at the end of Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The only good bit is when the fat bearded guy tells Gloria Suart what he thinks of nonsensical romantic gestures.

If great wealth is lost through bad luck or some dark roll of the dice, wise men can find it in their hearts to laugh. And if a wealthy person decides to give away a large sum to a poor person or a noble cause, fine. But only fools throw valuable things into the sea.

The aesthetic fate of Catching Fire, the Hunger Games sequel, is back in jeopardy this morning. Nikki Finke and Mike Fleming are reporting that “multiple sources” have told them that director Gary Ross “has not formally withdrawn from the Hunger Games sequel”…zounds! Ross “is off on a family vacation and couldn’t be reached” — bullshit — “but these internet reports that described his withdrawal as definitive are simply not accurate,” per Finke and Fleming.

I wrote yesterday that if — if — Ross has left the franchise it’ll be a good thing all around because his direction of The Hunger Games was/is highly problematic. I also stated a suspicion that Lionsgate execs realize they can do better than Ross for the next two films, and if they’re smart they’ll nudge him toward other pastures and opportunities.

Earlier this week Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy suggested some alternative choices for the Catching Fire gig, given the mismatch with Ross. It’s unlikely Lionsgate will go for an auteur because they’ll want someone they can push around. But they’d be foolish to ignore what Alfonso Cuaron proved when he took the reins on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (’04), which is that talented directors can up the artistic ante while still delivering what the franchise requires.

McCarthy suggested Cuaron and four others:

Kathryn Bigelow: “If The Hurt Locker and Bin Laden filmmaker wants a mainstream gig, she could elevate the pedigree of the Katniss saga.”

Mel Gibson: Don’t laugh. If Catching Fire is one-third as exciting as Apocalypto, it would be dynamite. But can Mel do PG-13?

Walter Hill: “The old-guard director (The Warriors) could provide style and an authentic feel for action that was missing in the first film.

Nicolas Winding Refn: “If modern edginess and unexpected moves are desired for the sequel, then the Drive director could be the man to deliver them.”

HE’s own suggestion: Juan Antonio Bayona, director of The Orphanage and the forthcoming The Impossible.

I don’t believe those reports about Hunger Games director Gary Ross quitting the lucrative franchise because Lionsgate wouldn’t give him a sufficient raise. If true, I suspect that Lionsgate gave Ross the oblique heave-ho because almost everyone thought his direction of The Hunger Games was bad and Lionsgate knew they could do better. In fact, I’m personally claiming partial credit for Ross’s departure as I was one of those who bemoaned his visual handlings.

Hunger Games director Gary Ross.

Consider these complaints:

“Certainly the character [of Katniss Everdeen] is strong enough to survive Gary Ross’s direction…she’s such a sensational character that she fires up your imagination, even when Mr. Ross seems intent on dampening it.” — Manohla Dargis, N.Y. Times.

“Working with the cinematographer Tom Stern, Ross shoots in a style that I have come to despise. A handheld camera whips nervously from one angle to another; the fragments are then jammed together without any regard for space. You feel like you’ve been tossed into a washing machine (don’t sit in the front rows without Dramamine). Even when two people are just talking calmly, Ross jerks the camera around. Why? As the sense of danger increases, he has nothing to build toward. Visually, he’s already gone over the top.” — David Denby, New Yorker.

“The Hunger Games is at best a mediocre effort — an obviously second-tier thing, tedious, lacking in poetry or grace or kapow. It feels sketchy, under-developed, emotionally simplistic and hambone. And it looks cheap and cheesy. My strongest reaction was to Tom Stern’s awful cinematography, which I found visually infuriating. Stern’s shooting, especially in the last two thirds, is almost all jaggedy, boppity-bop, bob-and-weave close-ups. Way too close.” — me, Hollywood Elsewhere

“The most egregious failing of The Hunger Games [is] the direction by Gary Ross. Guys, there is not a single shot in this movie that is longer than four seconds. Not one. I fucking timed them. It is a 2 1/2 hour parade of lightning-fast cuts that jumble the storytelling, allow no time for the audience to get a sense of place or relationship, and muddle every action sequence to the point where it’s almost impossible to tell what’s going on.” — Andrew Nienaber, fataldownflaw.com.

These coasters are included in the Casablanca 70th anniversary Bluray box set. They also show how corporate mentalities screw stuff up. It would be okay to have coasters that say The Blue Parrot or La Belle Aurore sitting on your coffee table, but slapping the Casablanca logo on the bottom of each kills the mood. It says “these are marketing tools!” The fantasy should be that the coasters came from actual restaurants. Corporate people are incapable of grasping this distinction. All they know is, “Push the brand.”

In his January 2010 review of High School, Film School Rejects’ Neil Miller called it “a stoner comedy worthy of being mentioned in the same paragraph as both Dazed and Confused and the great John Hughes…for a movie that could be easily labeled a ‘stoner comedy,’ it’s about as good as it gets.” So the reason it’s being released two and half years later is because distributors…what, felt it needed to age like fine wine?

EW’s Owen Gleiberman gets Titanic over, under, down, around and sideways — he gets the all of it, the heart of it, the delight, the wowness, the metaphors, the sadness and the transportation…the oompah trumping cornball each and every time, and to hell with the cheap snarkos and naysayers. Here’s the closing graph in his Titanic 3D review:

“A starry-eyed youth romance that collides with history and disaster: That’s the ‘concept’ of Titanic. [And] yet there’s so much more going on in this movie, with its deftly structured mythological framework, its heart-of-the-ocean timelessness, and — yes, I’ll say it — its hauntingly gorgeous Gaelic-pop theme music.

“The Titanic, that splendid vessel, is like the 20th century itself, launching forth in all its looming luxe and promise, with Jack as the symbolic new man on the rise — the aristocrat of the spirit who uses his charm and talent to enter realms from which he would previously have been barred. Rose, with her hint of a Jane Austen dilemma (if she follows her bliss and goes off with Jack, it will leave her family in ruins), is the young feminist who now has the peril, as well as pleasure, of choice.

“And once the ship scrapes up against that iceberg, Jim Cameron‘s filmmaking turns humanly brilliant, as the prospect of sudden death unmasks — in the most touching and shocking ways — who each and everyone on board really is. Jack’s death scene in the water has the shuddery majesty of the greatest silent films, because it’s a moment that touches how vulnerable and precious life really is. To watch Titanic again is to do nothing less than enter a movie and come out the other side, with one’s spirit feeling just a little bit larger.”

I’m not saying the word “magic” in a movie title means “stinker”, but it’s usually cause for concern. And you can double it when you add “directed by Rob Reiner.” I’ve always thought of “magic” as a tedious word used by lazy-minded people. Anyone who says “it’s movie magic” is someone you probably don’t want to know too well. These folks also say “genius” a lot. Anyone who says something like “my friend Linda is a genius at marketing” is instantly crossed off for life, and I don’t want to know Linda either.

I remember sensing right away that Magic, the 1978 Anthony Hopkins film written by William Goldman, would be bad. Ditto The Magic Christian, Practical Magic, Thomas as the Magic Railroad, etc. The instant I saw the poster for The Magic of Lassie I knew it would be a crap family film. And I’ve always hated that song that goes “oh, oh, oh, it’s magic!”

N.Y. Times “Media Decoder” columnist David Carr has written a blunt but fair-minded and quasi-definitive appraisal of Keith Olbermann by describing him as a tempestuous drama queen who off-camera will never be a day at the beach. Carr calls him (a) a “big baby…any reporter who has covered him could tell you all about that,” (b) a guy known for “unmanageability and unpleasantness” and (c) “the equivalent of a supremely talented left-handed pitcher with a strong arm — and some obvious control issues — that can give whatever team hires him a lot of quality innings.”

Here, by the way, is that Spy magazine portrait of another big baby.