Summit is allowing a select few to see Juan Antonio Bayona‘s keenly anticipated tsunami-drama, The Impossible, sometime early next month, even though it’s not slated for release until October 11th — i.e., over six months hence. I’ve always assumed this allegedly high-calibre, European-styled disaster drama would debut at Telluride-Venice-Toronto, but wouldn’t it be cool if it had an early peek-out in Cannes?

The death of three racehorses led to the cancellation of HBO’s Luck, but also, it would seem, to a blistering 3.24 N.Y. Times story, written by Walt Bogdanovich, Joe Drape, Dara L. Miles and Griffin Palmer, about how horses are dropping like flies on the nation’s racetracks, largely due to heartless owners and an over-reliance on drugs.

The story is called “Mangled Horses, Maimed Jockeys.” Here’s the sad video.

“A state-by-state survey by The Times shows that about 3,600 horses died racing or training at state-regulated tracks over the last three years. Since 2009, the incident rate has not only failed to go down, it has risen slightly.

“The greatest number of incidents on a single day — 23 — occurred last year on the most celebrated day of racing in America, the running of the Kentucky Derby. One Derby horse fractured a leg, as did a horse in the previous race at Churchill Downs. All told, seven jockeys at other tracks were thrown to the ground after their horses broke down.

“The new economics of horse racing are making an always-dangerous game even more so, as lax oversight puts animal and rider at risk.”

With the new Bluray of The Grapes of Wrath obtainable on 4.3 via pre-order, it’s worth considering this three-year-old Re-Think review by the highly intelligent Jonathan Kim. I was particularly charmed by his casual mention of Teabaggers as “idiots.” Too few film reviewers are willing to step outside the movies-only realm and call a spade a spade.

I still have problems with the diner scene, which, as I mentioned five years ago and then again in ’09, is a perfect thing until the very end when Ford’s Irish sentimentality kills it. This has always been Ford’s problem, and why his films are best appreciated in limited doses. Not to mention his tendency to prod his supporting actors into over-acting and doing the “tedious eccentricity” thing — Ford’s ultimate Achilles heel. The overacting of that waitress is especially painful.

Enlivened by this candid, “I hate myself,” “I’m gonna get fired!,” no-holds-barred interview with Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence, David Letterman says he can’t wait to see the film because “I want more of this.” Which the film doesn’t provide. It’s about Lawrence in the Katniss box. Lawrence quickly informs Letterman of this.

“You don’t make up for your sins in the church. You do it in the street. You do it at home. All the rest is bullshit and you know it.” I’m having trouble imagining how this 1973 Martin Scorsese film, which may have been shot on 35mm but always looked to me like it was shot on 16mm, would be any kind of Bluray wowser. It might look a little better, okay. Probably grainier. Either way I’ll buy it or snag a freebie.

It was understood late yesterday that Friday’s Hunger Games tally would be around $70 million. In fact it brought in $68.25 million with expectations of $132 million by Sunday night. As I slogged along on the freeway I tweeted that “if you’re impressed by today’s Hunger Games earnings, you’ll be impressed by the millions of granules that make up a sand storm.” There is nothing less meaningful in the realms of cultural and artistic truth and lasting validation than the mere earning of moolah. The Movie Godz are napping. Presumably HE legions have seen it by now. And…?

Reed Business has put Variety up for sale, and once it sells God help those on the payroll. Five years ago who would’ve figured that The Hollywood Reporter, for decades the Avis to Variety‘s Hertz brand, would be the survivor and Variety would go down to the sea in ships? Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson has summarized what went wrong, but in all fairness what went wrong can be summarized in four words — cluelessness, corporatism and Neil Stiles.

Slate‘s L.V. Anderson and Belief.net’s Nell Minow ragged on some Hunger Games comments, including my own. Anderson accuses me and two others (Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy and N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis) of “bodsynarking on Jennifer Lawrence,” which he calls a “baffling, infuriating trend.” Minow called my remarks in this alleged vein “truly horrifying.”

I took no shots at Lawrence. I merely said that in a romantic context she “seems too big” for her jockey-sized costar Josh Hutcherson. Yes, Hutcherson’s Hunger Games character (called Peeta) is a bit of a candy-ass, which is why Ross cast an actor of smaller stature, but the vast majority of real-life women tend to pair up with guys their size or taller, so what’s so horrifying about saying Lawrence-Hutcherson look like a curious romantic fit? I posted a photo that showed their size disparity.

Minow suggests that instead of saying Lawrence is too big for Hutcherson, I should have said Hutcherson “is too small for her.” Okay, fine — he’s too small for her.

Minow also says I advised HE readers “to beware of the reviews of The Hunger Games by female critics ‘as they’re probably more susceptible to the lore of this young-female-adult-propelled franchise than most.'” I didn’t actually say that. I said to be wary of “certain” female critics who “may” be susceptible, etc. The use of “certain” and “may” make the difference between a blanket statement and a carefully phrased one. The p.c. goose-steppers will always assert that no one is ever more susceptible or responsive to a film with particular point of view than anyone else. We’re all neutral, all Switzerland, all the time. As I explained yesterday, that is laughable bullshit.

I arrived in Palm Springs last night for the wedding of In Contention‘s Kris Tapley and April Smith, which happens today at 4 pm. Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, her daughter Emma and I are staying at the vaguely low-rent Travelodge on 111. Because I wasn’t disciplined enough to leave before 4 pm, the drive took 3 and 1/2 hours…mostly tedium, some agony.

Greek salad at Palm Springs’ Manhattan deli — Friday, 3.23, 8:40 pm.

The model or inspiration for Rick Santorum‘s moron-pitched fear fantasy ad was most likely Jack Webb‘s Red Nightmare, a government-funded short that Webb produced and narrated. It was meant to be shown to high-school students; it aired on the tube in 1962 on Webb’e GE True.

You think I’m going to shell out for a 70th anniversary Bluray of Casablanca that has been described by Robert Harris as having “a more normal patina of grain“? Me to Amoeba sales guy: “Hi, there. I understand you have a 70th anniversary Bluray grainstorm version of Casablanca?” Ameoba sales guy to me: “Uhh, that’s right, sir…it’s definitely been grained up! And made to look a bit darker!””

Here’s how Harris describes it: “I was generally fond of the 2008 edition, as the film looked quite good on Blu-ray. Not as good as it might, but as good as it could under the conditions that WB was releasing Blu-rays in 2008. Meaning that grain was nicely smoothed. The image had a pleasant homogenized look, which was fit for anything Ultimate. For the 70th Anniversary, the image looks improved, but to my eye only by the fact that a more normal patina of grain is present. Do I like it better? Certainly.”

Am I going to run, not walk, in the opposite direction? You betcha.

RIck Blaine: “I came to the latest Casablanca Bluray for the grain.” Captain Renault: “Grain? What grain? Casablanca was shot on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank under perfectly lighted conditions. The last Bluray had a gentle grain structure, but it was all but grain-free, really…and it was beautiful.” Rick Blaine: “Well, I was misinformed.”

“Making an exciting movie out of The Hunger Games should not have been that hard,” writes New Yorker critic David Denby. But aside from the cast, the movie “is pretty much a disaster — disjointed, muffled, and even, at times, boring. It’s a prime example of commercial hypocrisy. The filmmakers bait kids with a cruel idea, but they can’t risk being too intense or too graphic (the books are more explicit).

“After a while, we get the point: because children are the principal audience, the picture needs a PG-13 rating. The result is an evasive, baffling, unexciting production — anything but a classic.

“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.

“And the action itself is a thrashing, incoherent blur — kids tumbling on the ground or wrestling with each other. Katniss stalks various kids with her bow and arrow, but she kills only one intentionally–a domineering sadist–and you don’t see the arrow hit him; you don’t even see him fall. Ross consistently drains away all the tensions built into the grisly story–the growing wariness and suspicion that each teen-ager must feel as the number of those still alive begins to diminish, or the horror (or glee) that some of them experience as they commit murder.”http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2012/04/02/120402crci_cinema_denby#ixzz1pyepbuwE