It’s entirely possible that Hollywood Elsewhere will be overwhelmed later today by traffic, as it was during last year’s Oscar telecast. People not only had difficulty refreshing the site but I myself had difficulty posting. I’m just saying. I’ve just had a long, infuriating conversation with a senior-tech person at Softlayer, during which he assured me there’s little I can do at this juncture.

The “Easy Rider, Raging Bull” days were in full bloom. Shampoo had just wrapped, and film rights to the unpublished All The President’s Men had just been bought by Robert Redford. The air was awful. (Catalytic converters had only just been invented a year earlier.) El Cholo and Lost on Larrabee were hip restaurants. The Microsoft Corp. was eight or nine months away from being hatched by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. And LexG was…what, four years old? (Photo tweeted by Shawn Levy.)

Sunset Blvd. near Chateau Marmont, June 1974.

For what it’s worth, FilmJerk odds & number-cruncher Edward Havens is predicting a George Clooney win over Jean Djuardin and the other three. And Viola Davis over Meryl Streep. Beyond that I don’t think we need to hear any more Artist talk.

The 2012 Spirit Awards did the wrong thing today by giving four awards to the Big Oscar Inevitable known as The Artist — Best Feature, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Cinematography. The worst kowtow was giving Jean Dujardin its Best Actor prize instead of, say, A Better Life‘s Damien Bichir or Take Shelter‘s Michael Shannon. It wasn’t an indie thing to do — it was a “we want to be the Oscars too!” thing. Extremely bad form, dark day, etc.

Random Tweet #1: “Spirit Award for Best Actor goes to…Jean Dujardin? At the Spirits? People in the press tent going ‘eewww!” What a drag. Not Bichir?” Random Tweet #2: “Is it because I’m not drinking that the 2012 Spirit Awards are feeling so…I don’t know, rote and meh and under-energized & not-enoughy?” Random Tweet #3: “Not even light munchie food in Spirit Awards press cantina. No celery sticks, no carrots, no nothin’ — just empty, scarfed-up food boxes.” Random Tweet #4: “AT&T 3G is ridiculously slow in press tent. Too many people tweeting in too dense a space. No wifi for MacBook Pro and no celery sticks.”

Best Female Lead Spirit Award winner Michelle Williams — Saturday, 2.25, 2:55 pm.

I have to get over to the 2012 Spirit Awards in Santa Monica, which Seth Rogen will be hosting. The show begins at 1:30 pm, but the best part is the 90 minutes of schmooze time before it kicks off. Most of the indie community shows up every year. For me it’s a picture- and video-taking orgy. As long as the weather isn’t chilly and blustery like last year, everything’ll be jake.

Now that Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh‘s critically-dismissed Act of Valor has emerged as the weekend’s #1 film with an expected $27 million, and now that at least some HE readers have seen it, did the “real Navy SEALS shooting real ammo” aspect do anything for anyone? From the get-go haven’t people been bracing for the expected shortcomings in the acting end of things? And how could live rounds mean anything to anyone? What detectable versimilitude could possibly occur from this?

And I’m a little surprised that eighth-place Wanderlust is an instant DOA. People just didn’t want to see it. Which is about the concept, I suppose, as well as a referendrum on the drawing power of Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston. People saw the poster, reminded themselves that Aniston almost never makes A-level movies, read the story about her pixellated breasts (and how she insisted on the boob coverup as a gesture of deference to boyfriend/costar Justin Theroux) and figured it’s a Netflix download, plain and simple. Plus people…what, aren’t into comedies about hippie communes?

What a disconnect between the 2.16 Wanderlust premiere screening and what I was feeling (i.e., moderate amusement) as I watched and the brutal reality of the box-office. I thought it might have a moderately okay weekend and then descend the following weekend and disappear.

Visual effects (including special makeup) can be “imaginative, even astonishing, but [they] are ultimately there to sell a world, a character or a moment,” writes Press Play‘s Aaron Aradillas for a two-parter about horror and makeup. “One of makeup’s greatest triumphs is 1981’s An American Werewolf in London, which became the first film to win an Oscar for makeup in regular competition. Overseen by Rick Baker, who supervised all of the film’s makeup effects, it shows a man changing into a werewolf in real time…right in front of your eyes.”

And the first time I saw this I felt mildly deflated. For me it was a time-out, a prosthetic musical number, a demo reel showing everyone how necessary it would be to hire Baker when and if they made a horror film. For me werewolves were always half-wolves and half-men, so why did we have to do the big trans-species transformation? I didn’t care if David Naughton could grow a real wolf snout and wolf ears, and in fact would have much preferred him becoming a two-legged, Lon Chaney-style werewolf running around in a snarly, feral mode and half-resembling himself. It’s all a metaphor anyway so who needs prosthetics that turn him into a generic four-legged hairball with fangs?

Landis and Baker and all those dug-in, highly-paid special-effects industry guys had to do better. They had to do more. They had to show off, and most horror fans, being the low-lifes that they are, loved this. Gradually horror films, especially with the advent of the digital era, became defined by narrative and thematic coherence getting nudged aside by the effects themselves. It was during the ’80s that effects became the films.

The best parts of American Werewolf were (a) the backpacking section with Naughton and Griffin Dunne, (b) “dead”, torn-apart and progressively rotting Dunne coming back to chat with Naughton, and (c) Jenny Agutter‘s scenes.

To Catch a Thief (Paramount Home Video, 3.6) “looks marvelous on dual-layered Blu-ray. Everything tightens-up impressively and the contrast takes notable strides in the 1080p resolution. Colors also appear to improve with better balance in the presentation that has more than 4X the bitrate of the last SD transfer. A fair dusting of grain, no disturbing noise, no signs of digital manipulation. By far the best viewing I’ve ever had of this film. Beautiful.” — DVD Beaver‘s Gary Tooze.

From 3.6 Paramount Home Video Bluray of To Catch A Thief (3.6)

Ditto

Ditto

In the wake of this afternoon’s Deadline report that the Academy has reversed course and will now permit Sacha Baron Cohen to do with his red-carpet routine to promote The Dictator, MCN’s David Poland is tweeting “Wow…if Nikki Finke is correct, a new precedent is being set for the Oscars. And I expect people to be fired.”

This, I’ve long believed, is Poland at the nub. When some person or company has been judged to have seriously erred through stupidity or clumsy politics or has otherwise dropped the clay vase on the stone floor, there is only remedy in Polandworld — i.e, severe punishment. People must lose their jobs and/or be tarred and feathered. They must be wounded economically. They must put out their hand and the hand must be cut off with a sword. No wrist-slaps, no admonishments, no probations. Arterial blood must soak the sand.

The blood, it it happens, is over a possible scenario that’s being discussed by Poland and Harold Itzkowitz, to wit: that the Sacha Baron Cohen banned-and-then-allowed-to-walk-the-carpet story is/was (a) a stunt and, (b) that it’s “looking more and more like [it] was orchestrated with Finke & Sherak, not just WME & Paramount].”

Undetermined quote #1: “If this cahootism is proved, it’s a downfall.” Undetermined quote #2: “One would think Finke has better survival skills than to do this, no? What’s interesting is that [this] story isn’t mainstream yet.” Undetermined quote 3: “What is stunning… if this is true… is that smart people recently hired at The Academy can be this fucking stupid.”

One of them commented earlier in the thread: “Is every call by the new Academy team going to be another Brett Ratner moment?”

My point (apart from the particulars of this story, which I know nothing about one way or the other) is that while the stories may change from month to month, Poland’s appetite for Jihadist vengeance remains constant.

Poland inqures: “Paramount spokesperson officially denies N[ikki] Finke, who initiated & promoted a ‘controversy,’ is being paid to shill 4 The Dictator.”

I wrote this right after the 2.16 Wanderlust premiere in Westwood, and then pulled it due to embargo restrictions: “Certain…okay, several portions of David Wain‘s Wanderlust (Universal, 2.24), a snappy satire of straightlaced vs. hippie-ish values and lifestyles, aren’t half bad. That’s not to say I laughed out loud, but I was quiety amused by much of it. And the crowd at the Village tonight was having a pretty good time.

“Wain and Ken Marino‘s screenplay is about a pair of anxious urban marrieds (Paul Rudd, Jennifer Aniston) toying with life at a well-tended hippie commune in Georgia when their…well, when Rudd’s New York job disappears. The film wrenches gags out of Rudd-Aniston reacting to (and in some ways blending in with) the sensual, free-form, flaky aspects of freako life — all very easily satirized — and then Rudd-Aniston pulling up stakes at the last minute and going, “Whoa…enough of that!” And the entrepenurial tidiness of the wrap-up is a bit much.

“Are there any hippie communes in 2012? Didn’t they all fade out about 30 years ago? No matter. The point is that Wanderlust ultimately says hippie life is open and free but also a form of kool-aid fraudulence, and that for all their hang-ups yuppie rat-racers are the real stand-up deal. So while it throws out some very sharp social barbs, particularly at an arrogant, nouveau-riche couple and local news twerps, at heart Wanderlust is a rather timid, conservative-minded comedy.

“Onemarital infidelity scene involving Aniston and another guy happens off-screen (too shocking to visualize?) and another — i.e., going topless before local news cameras — is pixellated. Why do this if you’re going to candy-ass out?

“The film basically says it’s best not to wander too far from your safe middle-class behavior zones. Or, alternately, that a little hippy-dippy in your life can be a fun thing for a week or two, but don’t dive into it whole-hog. Go back to the big city and get a job, big guy! I have a feeling that George and Laura Bush will love it.

“Justin Theroux (Aniston’s current b.f.) is pretty good as the most charismatic guy in the hippie clan. Ditto Alan Alda as the doddering founder of the hippie retreat and owner of the land and estate. Also fine are Malin Akerman, Lauren Ambrose, Joe Lo Truglio, Kathryn Hahn and Melissa Joan Hart.”

It’s been announced that the L.A. Times is going with a paywall on March 5th. Meaning that if I want to continue to read film industry coverage by Patrick Goldstein, Steven Zeitchik Nicole Sperling and John Horn on a wide-open basis, I’ll have to cough up (a) $1.99 per week in a package that also includes the Sunday newspaper (which is a no-go — the idea of that all-but-worthless mass of tree pulp being dropped on my doorstep every Sunday is repulsive) or (b) digital-only access at $3.99 per week. Online access will be included gratis for print subscribers.

That couldn’t be $3.99 per month, could it? Naaah.

In my mind the L.A. Times is a moribund and unnecessary thing save for the output of the above. I’m honestly not sure if I’m inclined to pay $16 a month and change to receive it. I might, grudgingly, but I’ll probably just use the free-access option (i.e., up to 15 stories a month) and take my chances.

What would Mitt Romney say? “Let it die!”