Hollywood Elsewhere disappeared about an hour ago for about 25 minutes because of a tiny little spam post about pepper spray that was included in a comment thread under a 3.10.09 HE article called “Mumblecore Plus,” which was a review of Joseph Swanberg‘s Alexander The Last. Well, not specifically due to the spam itself but…here’s how it went down.

All is well now but I can’t believe that anyone in the world can be as anal or petty as the guy who started all the trouble, a Jacksonville merchandiser named Joseph Morris. Except I was the cause of the shutdown — make no mistake. It was me. Nobody else. But Morris was the instigator and the nitpicker.

Somewhere in that “Mumblecore Plus” thread an underpaid schlub from Estonia or China posted a piece of spam about a pepper-spray product. Which ants, worms and maggots, if they could read and could operate a computer, wouldn’t give a damn about.

Six days ago I received a letter from Morris, who runs a Jacksonville-based company called Buy Pepper Spray Today. (Which I’ve been blocked from visiting within the last hour or so.) His letter complained that the March 2009 spam post was infringing upon his legal URL copyright, and that he was prepared to “seek the removal of the infringing material” and therefore block any website hosting this spam, and that he would do so under Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

I read Morris’s letter, and rather than act like an adult by removing the offending spam and alerting him that I had done so, I wrote him the following: “Are you serious? A fragment of a post from 2009, or three and three-quarter years ago, was copied onto my server by some person working from a Chinese or Estonian spam sweatshop, and you’re telling me to do something about it? This is what you do with your life?”

I guess I was also thinking about the product itself. Pepper spray has been used by cops to disperse Occupy protestors, or so I’ve read. So I sitting there thinking, “He’s selling an ugly product so eff this guy.”

“Why weren’t you concerned about this three years ago?,” I continued. “Or two years ago? Why did you wait nearly four years to complain? Are you really being this anal? Are you reading my reply with your thumb lodged inside your anal cavity as we speak? — Jeffrey Wells.”

That took a little energy to write — a little energy and some time to think it through and make the editing decision to not write “thumb up your ass” but instead “thumb lodged inside your anal cavity.” I mean, I could have simply deleted the pepper-spray post and informed Morris of same in half or one-third the time that it took to tell him he was being a huge pain. It was after midnight and I guess I was tired or irritated or whatever, but the bottom line is that it seemed, at that moment, more important to tap out a smartass reply than simply man up and take care of the problem.

And so Morris, obstinate fellow that he is, wrote my server, Softlayer of Houston, and sent them a properly constituted letter about the offense and cited Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). And then Softlayer sent me two letters about this, which I ignored because I don’t read at least half the crap that comes into my inbox because…I don’t know but it probably has something to do with feeling overworked and frazzled, especially in the wee hours. I regard any piece of mail that comes into my inbox that’s not personal or business-related as something to swat or wave away.

So around noon the Softlayer guys blocked the site. I hit the roof, called them up and screamed that this issue was about a single piece of spam that was posted nearly four years ago, etc. They lifted the blockage after a half hour’s worth of ranting, and I finally removed the spam post and it was duly recorded on a Softlayer trouble ticket. I feel like a jerk for not having acted in a more practical-minded way, but that’s how I roll from time to time, especially late at night when I’ve been at it for 16 or 17 hours.

“I loved you in Drive, you got robbed at the Oscars, I paid for the socks.” This was taped (or aired) on 12.6 so it’s ancient. But even after the horrors of Newtown, it’s funny.

Last March I explained two things. One, that I’d read the script for Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis. And two, that Oscar Isaacs’ titular character in this matter-of-fact dramedy set against the backdrop of the early ’60s folk scene in Greenwich Village “bears no resemblance whatsover to the ’60s cafe folk-singer Dave Van Ronk,” or at least the Van Ronk I’ve read about over the years.

And yet today (12.18) Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman described Isaac “as a stand-in for real life folk musician Dave van Ronk”…Jesus!

Look, maybe there were two Dave van Ronks back in the early ’60s. One was this large, hulking troubadour guy who knew everyone, who organized West Village musicians so they wouldn’t be exploited by cafe owners and who “was heavily committed to folk music, to the musician community, to his troubadour way of life and to everything that was starting to happen in the early ’60s…if nothing else a man who lived large.” And the other Van Ronk was this smallish, morose, Latin-looking guy (like Isaacs) who lived and thought small, and was no spiritual match for the hulking Van Ronk…a guy who was glum and vaguely pissed off and resentful, and tried to make it as a folk musician but wasn’t much of a go-getter and who slept on a lot of couches. And the Coens sat down and said to each other, “You know what? Fuck the real Dave van Ronk…let’s make a film about his doppelganger.”

Friedman was writing about a recent friends-and-coworkers screening of Inside Llewyn Davis in Manhattan. His source tells him that Carey Mulligan‘s character is “romantically linked” to Isaac’s — not true. She’s pregnant by him and needs to get an abortion, but in no way are they romantically linked, at least not on the page. Mulligan’s character can’t stand Isaacs’ character. Nothing but bile and bitterness.

Friedman writes that “the film got raves from those who saw it, but it’s also said to be unlike most Coen brothers movies — no violence, no sex, no weird irony.” That sounds like the script I read. Very plain and low-key and untricky.

One viewer tells Friedman that Inside Llewyn Davis “made me cry”….bullshit. The Coen brothers have never made films that anyone has wept over, and they never will. They make cinematic, camera-rich movies with feisty performances and sardonic undertones that you can smirk or chuckle at if you want…but forget weeping or sniffling. Not in their wheelhouse.

Inside Llewyn Davis could possibly travel to Cannes five months hence, Friedman writes…and if you ask me it probably will.

I’ve just downloaded YouTube Capture to the iPhone5. “The app lets you record a video clip, write a caption, select which networks you want to share to, and publish”…wham. Doesn’t just upload to YouTube, but to Google+, Facebook, and Twitter. Includes color correction and stabilization, and “it lets you trim the length and add free background music from YouTube.” I use my own music choices or nothing.

“After all the female avengers of the past fifteen years — Uma Thurman and Angelina Jolie kicking men in the ego and other places — American movies have at last produced a woman clothed, like Athena, in willful strength and intellectual armor.” — New Yorker critic David Denby writing about Jessica Chastain‘s “Maya” in Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s Zero Dark Thirty.

Last night I attended a q & a between Silver Linings Playbook director-writer David O. Russell and Jeff Goldsmith. Russell was fresh and fluid as ever, a nonstop power-pulser. He doesn’t “talk” as much as he channels thought streams and turns on the spigot and out they come. I recorded the whole thing but Goldsmith said “no, no, wait…not yet…Wednesday!” I said “okay, man, whatever, but now is NOW. This stuff doesn’t age well. You have to put it out there. Time’s a wastin’.”

David O. Russell, Jeff Goldsmith at L.A. Film School — Sunday, 12.16, 9:55 pm.

After chatting for an hour-plus, Russell suggested that they take questions from the audience. He sensed that the time had come, he told Goldsmith — “These people are restless, man.”

Sony Classics is opening Pablo Larrain‘s No — an all-but-certain nominee for Best Foreign Language Feature — on 2.15.13, and here, I gather, is the first English-language trailer. I called it “one of the smartest, well-layered and riveting real-life political dramas I’ve seen in ages” after seeing it in Cannes. Indiewire‘s James Rocchi called No “exactly the kind of film you hope to stumble across at Cannes…[something] well-made, superbly acted, funny, human, warm, principled…fiercely moral and intelligent.”

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I’m sorry but I’ve said many times that the standard-issue “free-falling from a great height” schtick is a stopper for me. Jumping off 200-foot cliffs into the ocean will kill you as surely as it killed Tony Scott. Don’t even bring up the male-protagonist-falling-from-a-tall-building shot — it’s been done so often there should be an automatic DGA fine for this. JJ Abrams knows how to play the big-action-movie game much better than I, but why can’t there be thrills and threats that are realistically digestible?

Urban-action-fantasy heroes don’t drop cyanide capsules or shoot themselves in the temple or walk in front of speeding cars because we all know these things kills…but they can jump off any cliff or tall building they want and it’s always “wheee!” Video-game perversion.

The Newtown revulsion of the last three days is very much in the air, and I don’t think this is going to do any favors for Django Unchained, which [NON-SURPRISING SPOILER] is drenched in blood towards the finale…bodies on the floor, blood on the walls. It would be one thing if Tarantino was an earnest, hard-core, straight-on filmmaker in the Michael Haneke mode. But he’s all about “attitude”, flip humor, irony and references to ’70s movies, and to pour blood on top of that? Doesn’t feel right in this climate.

It seems provincial and small-minded to say this, given the much larger ramifications, but I think Newtown has probably hurt Django a lot.

Right now, I’m told, it’s Tarantino vs. David O. Russell vs. Tom Hooper for the fifth Best Directing Oscar nomination. This assumes that Steven Spielberg, Ben Affleck, Kathryn Bigelow and Ang Lee are locks…but are they? I think QT is out right now and that the divided reaction to Les Miz speaks for itself, and that the five finalists are Spielberg, Russell, Affleck, Bigelow and Lee.

90% of the clips in this mashup are from disposable, disreputable ADD/CG films with the usual emphasis on shouts, wallows, emotional explosions and “kapow!” impact cutting. No explortion of themes, thoughts, social current, echoes. 2012 was a much more nourishing year than is indicated here. I’ll wager than the editor, genrocks, is youngish, geeky, hyper-ish.

Cheers and thumbs-up to the Indiana Film Journalists Association for handing its Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay awards to Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly‘s Safety Not Guaranteed — a fairly novel and highly agreeable little indie. I know that sounds a little patronizing but I don’t mean to indicate that. I never riffed on it much, but I saw it…what, last summer? 80% appproval.

On the other hand…whoa! The IFJA giving their Best Director prize to Quentin Tarantino for an undisciplined and absurdly overlong wank like Django Unchained? I’m sorry but that’s ridiculous. A few more calls like this and their credibility will be in jeopardy.

Jessica Chastain took the Best Actress prize for Zero Dark Thirty, and Anne Hathaway won Best Supporting Actress for Les Miserables.

Silver Linings Playbook‘s Bradley Cooper and Lincoln‘s Daniel Day Lewis tied for Best Actor. Lincoln‘s Tommy Lee Jones won Best Supporting Actor.