Toronto Star critic Peter Howell has tweeted notification of a 5.23.12 European theatrical debut of Walter Salles‘ On The Road, obviously indicating a Cannes Film Festival debut.

“Haywire is lovingly lighted and filmed, its action as sparingly edited as old Hollywood musicals, so that the painstaking fight choreography can be appreciated,” writes N.Y. Times contributor Margy Rochlin in a Gina Carano interview piece. “As the double-crossed freelance agent Mallory Kane, Ms. Carano gives Haywire jolts of energy with her arsenal of explosive moves: pushing off walls, slinging sheet pans, twisting arms until they break.

Haywire star Gina Carano. (N.Y. Times photo by Misha Erwitt.)

Rochlin quotes Haywire director Steven Soderbergh as follows: “Why are action films so ugly? Why can’t there be action, and why can’t they be beautiful to look at?”

From my 11.7 review: “There’s something almost stunning about the straight-up realism in Haywire‘s fight scenes. Or nostalgic, I should say. For as I mentioned last night, and as Soderbergh himself noted during last night’s post-screening q & a, the fight-scene realism is a kind of tribute to the train-compartment battle between Sean Connery and Robert Shaw in From Russia With Love (’63).

“With their phony, fetishy, high-flying action-ballet bullshit, most Asian martial-arts films (efforts like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon excepted) get it so completely wrong, for whatever reason not understanding or unable to deliver Haywire‘s simple aesthetic.

“Soderbergh’s shooting and editing of the Haywire fight scenes is exquisite. Haywire is faster and more furious than Drive, but Soderbergh is clearly coming from the same ‘tone it down, think it through and make it real‘ school of action cinema. At no time do Haywire’s action scenes give you that awful feeling of being artificially adrenalized and jacked-up for the sake of coherence-defying Michael Bay-o sensation.”

Action geeks who’ve talked down Haywire so far are pitiful. Their preference for the heightened anti-realism and cartoon CG-bullshit school of action movies needs to be deplored. They are the carriers of the corporate, ComicCon-tinged virus than has all but ruined the action genre.

The following are the official HE guesstimates of the Ten Likeliest 2012 Best Picture Nominees, favored in front and less favored in the rear. Along with some very loosely-spitballed reasons why:

Bill Murray as Franklin D. Roosevelt in Roger Michell’s Hyde Park on Hudson

Lincoln (mid to late December), d: Steven Spielberg, cast: Daniel Day Lewis, Sally Field, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tommy Lee Jones. Why: The usual Spielberg-kowtow instinct (i.e., to show obeisance before power) plus the impact of Daniel Day Lewis‘s lead performance plus the instinct to show respect and allegiance for the legend of Abraham Lincoln. Classic historical chops. Will Spielberg try to hold back on his usual instincts? He may, I think, because of the Lewis influence.

The Master, d: Paul Thomas Anderson; cast: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Laura Dern. Why: This project has felt chilly from the get-go, but if it’s halfway focused and well-shaped it’ll offer a chance for Hollywood to deliver a big “eff you” to Scientology, which, we’ve all been told, The Master is absolutely not about. Plus it’s hard to imagine Hoffman’s L. Ron…sorry, charismatic leader performance not emerging as a Best Actor standout.

The Great Gatsby (12.25), d: Baz Luhrman, cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Joel Edgerton, Carey Mulligan, Isla Fisher. Why: The usual instinct to honor an adaptation of a classic novel. As long as Luhrman doesn’t screw it up, that is, by going all crazy and wackjobby like he did on Australia.

The Silver Linings Playbook (11.21), d: David O. Russell, cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker, Julia Stiles. Why: No clue, but Russell always delivers so I’m guessing/presuming here.

Gravity (11.21), d: Alfonso Cuaron; cast: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney. Why: The technical audacity of this film, described by Clooney as sort of 2001-ish, will attract respect and huzzahs.

Cloud Atlas, d: Wachowski Bros., Tom Tykwer; cast: Tom Hanks, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Hugh Grant, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Ben Whishaw. Why: You have to figure that anything the Wachowskis have their hands on (especially with Tykwer co-directing) will not be seen as “an Academy film”, but Cloud‘s narrative scheme is so dense and ambitious hat it might push through as a Best Picture favorite.

Les Miserables (12.7), d: Tom Hooper, cast: Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway. Why: Classic musical in grand sweeping historical tradition plus direction by Hooper (The King’s Speech) plus Crowe, Jackman, etc. And Hathaway finally sings.

Untitled David Chase ’60s “Music-Driven” Film (11.19), d: David Chase, cast: James Gandolfini, Brad Garrett, Bella Heathcote, Christopher McDonald. Why: Because every Best Picture tally needs a smaller, more granular film that reflects or honors some cherished period of the past. In this instance it’s the ’60s — an easy boomer pocket-drop.

Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Osama bin Laden Film (12.14). Why: This may just be a good, solid action film without any Oscar play, but respect will initially be paid to the director of the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker. To some pic may provide or represent a form of 9/11 closure.

Hyde Park on Hudson, d: Roger Michell, cast: Bill Murray, Laura Linney, Olivia Williams. Why: Michell is a classy, proficient director of midsize dramas and light comedies, and the plot — centered around the weekend in 1939 when the King and Queen of the United Kingdom visited upstate New York, and focusing in particular on love affair between FDR and his distant cousin Margaret Stuckley — suggests a King Speech-y vibe. But how will Murray fare with FDR?

Here’s a refreshed, add-on revision of a previously posted fall-holiday lineup piece that I ran on 12.25. The 2012 total is now 39 or 40, depending upon whether the Coen Bros.’ Inside Llewyn Davis opens this year or not. 2012 Sundance entries are sure to produce another four or five. Thanks to HE readers for input. HE conveys special interest.

Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams in Terrence Malick’s The Burial, expected to be finished and released sometime between now and fall 2014.

Winter Kickoff: Haywire (HE), d: Steven Soderbergh, w: Lem Dobbs, cast: Gina Carano, Channing Tatum, Ewan Mcgregor, Michael Fassbender, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas. (1)

Spring-Summer Distinction/Refinement: The Dark Knight Rises (HE), d: Christopher Nolan, cast: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Gary Oldman; Prometheus (HE), d: Ridley Scott, cast: Charlize Theron, Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Patrick Wilson, Idris Elba; Moonrise Kingdom(HE), d: Wes Anderson, cast: Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Jason Schwartzman, Harvey Keitel; Take This Waltz, d: Sarah Polley, cast: Michelle Williams Seth Rogen, Luke Kirby. (4)

2011 Holdovers, Winter-Spring Escapees: Wettest County, d: John Hillcoat, cast: Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf; 360 (d: Fernando Meirelles), cast: Rachel Weisz, Anthony Hopkins, Ben Foster, Jude Law; Deep Blue Sea, d: Terence Davies, cast: Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston, Simon Russell Beale; The Eye of the Storm, d: Fred Schepisi, cast: Charlotte Rampling, Geoffrey Rush, Judy Davis; Salmon Fishing in Yemen; d: Lasse Hallstrom, cast: Ewan McGregor, Emily Blunt, Kristin Scott Thomas; On The Road, d: Walter Salles, cast: Sam Riley, Garret Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Kirsten Dunst, Tom Sturridge, Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams. (6)

Free-Floating Quality-Level Genre Stabs: Cogan’s Trade (HE), d/w: Andrew Dominik, cast: Brad Pitt, Scott McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn; Seven Psychopaths (HE), d/w: Martin McDonagh, cast: Colin Farrell, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, Abbie Cornish; The Place Beyond The Pines (HE), d: Derek Cianfrance, cast: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Rose Byrne, Ray Liotta, Eva Mendes; Only God Forgives (HE), d: Nicolas Winding Refn, cast: Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas, Yayaying. (4)

Stand-alone: Skyfall, d: Sam Mendes, cast: Daniel Craig, Helen McCrory, Javier Bardem. (1)

Anticipated Quality, Presumed Fall-Holiday Release, No Dates: The Master (HE), d: Paul Thomas Anderson; cast: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Laura Dern; Cloud Atlas (HE), d: Wachowski Bros., Tom Tykwer; cast: Tom Hanks, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Hugh Grant, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Ben Whishaw; The Burial (a.k.a. Untitled Terrence Malick), d/w: Terrence Malick, cast: Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Jessica Chastain, Rachel Weisz, Michael Sheen, Javier Bardem; Hyde Park on Hudson, d: Roger Michell, cast: Bill Murray, Laura Linney, Olivia Williams. (4)

Harvey Keitel during shooting of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom.

Probably a 2013 Release: Inside Llewyn Davis, d: Joel and Ethan Coen. (1)

September 2012: Argo (9.14, HE), d: Ben Affleck, cast: Ben Affleck, Alan Arkin, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, Kerry Bishe, Kyle Chandler; Looper (9.28, HE), d: Rian Johnson, cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, Jeff Daniels, Piper Perabo; Savages (9.28, HE), d: Oliver Stone, cast: Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Aaron Johnson, John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Benicio Del Toro, Salma Hayek, Emile Hirsch, Demian Bichir. (3)

October 2012: The Gangster Squad (10.19, HE); d: Ruben Fleischer, cast: Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone; Untitled David Chase ’60s “Music-Driven” Film (1.19, HE), d: David Chase, cast: James Gandolfini, Brad Garrett, Bella Heathcote, Christopher McDonald; Nero Fiddled, d: Woody Allen, cast: Ellen Page, Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Allen, Penelope Cruz, Alison Pill, Alec Baldwin, Greta Gerwig; The Impossible, d: Juan Antonio Bayona, cast: Naomi Watts, Ewan Mcgregor. (4)

November 2012: The Silver Linings Playbook (11.21, HE), d: David O. Russell, cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker, Julia Stiles; Gravity (11.21, HE), d: Alfonso Cuaron; cast: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney. (2)

December 2012: Les Miserables (12.7, HE), d: Tom Hooper, cast: Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway; Great Hope Springs (12.14), d: David Frankel , cast: Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, Steve Carell; The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (12.14); Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Osama bin Laden Film (12.14, HE); This Is Forty (12.21, HE), d: Judd Apatow, cast: Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Albert Brooks, Megan Fox, Melissa McCarthy; World War Z (12.21), d: Marc Forster, cast: Brad Pitt; Lincoln (mid to late December, HE), d: Steven Spielberg, cast: Daniel Day Lewis, Sally Field, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tommy Lee Jones; Django Unchained (12.25, HE), d: Quentin Tarantino, cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Sacha Baron Cohen; The Great Gatsby (12.25, HE), d: Baz Luhrman, cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Joel Edgerton, Carey Mulligan, Isla Fisher; Life of Pi, d: Ang Lee, cast: Tobey Maguire, Irrfan Khan, Tabu. (10)

Hugo Weaving, Halle Berry and I-forget-his-name during shooting of Cloud Atlas.

Timur Bekmambetov‘s inability or refusal to restrain himself in the making of Wanted suggests that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (20th Century Fox, 6.22), which he’s directing and co-producing with Tim Burton, will also be lurid and excessive. It would be nice if otherwise. I want to like or at least be amused by this thing, but a voice is telling me that Bekmambetov will do everything he can to prevent that.

An idea just popped into my head that I’m not sure about, but I’ll run it up the flagpole. We’re still in the holiday season with thoughts of providing for the afflicted, so what about an HE fundraiser to pay for a couple of rounds at the Alien Cathouse (due to open sometime in early ’12) for LexG? If and when the cash is raised and LexG accepts, he’d agree to never again complain about anything personal.

I for one would gladly chip in $20 or $25 bucks. I’ve never patronized a brothel, but $600 to $700 should cover it. $1000 including car rental, gas, meals and two nights at a nearby motel.

It’s always a pleasure when a family drama has a cranky older guy or a crazy guy hanging around. Someone who will blurt out what’s really going on (and has gone on) without any restraint or regard for subtlety. Michael Shannon‘s crazy truth-teller in Revolutionary Road, Alan Arkin‘s drug-dabbling, blunt-spoken granddad in Little Miss Sunshine and Robert Forster‘s cranky gramps in The Descendants.

Descendants costar Robert Forster at West Hollywood’s Silver Spoon cafe.

Forster’s character (the father of George Clooney‘s comatose wife, called Scott Thorson), bawls out Shailene Woodley‘s Alexandra for giving her mom a rough time (“shame on you!”), and then he cold-cocks her friend Sid (Nick Krause), and then says “there you are again” to Sid when he returns in Act Three, and then he chews out Clooney for not giving enough to his “faithful, loyal wife”, and then he has a tender moment at his daughter’s bedside, kissing her goodbye.

These are all stick-to-the-ribs moments, and Forster brings each one home.

I don’t just love characters like this in films; I love them in real life. My father started to be like this when he got into his ’60s, but he really turned it on in his ’70s and ’80s.

Significnt signpost: Oscar Talk‘s Kris Tapley and Anne Thompson acknowledge in their latest podcast that some kind of blowback reaction to The Artist is manifesting “out there.” For what it’s worth a filmmaker friend told me last night that he sees The Descendants pushing past The Artist and War Horse at the end of the day. “I’m glad to hear you say that,” I said, “but I don’t know.”

The audience at Royce Hall began clapping along to a number performed by Woody Allen’s New Orleans Jazz Band the other night, and it was obvious right away that many couldn’t hit the exact beat to save their lives. But then clapping in a metronomically perfect way is hard even for experienced drummers. I used to drum for a couple of bands in my early 20s and I learned that hitting the snare drum at exactly the right instant, 75 or 100 times during a song, was actually kind of hard.

In a mathematical sense the perfect whap of a drumstick upon a snare drum happens within a very tiny realm, and the truth is that many drummers hit the snare slightly outside this perfect instant — a millisecond before or after. Most people don’t realize and couldn’t care less, but once your ear and your sense of timing is attuned to the variations, you can tell when a drum beat is missing the sweet spot and when it’s precisely dead on (or damn close to it).

If you were to look at a sound wave chart that identified the exact sweet spot for a snare drum hit and wanted to assign numerical digits to the area just before and just after this, you could blow the chart up and use a ruler and calculate as many as 100 marks in the general area of a true beat. Or theoretically 1,000 or 10,000. But let’s deal with a more comprehensible 100. In theory there would be only one truly perfect hit among 100 marks, obviously at the 50 mark. Many if not most drummers hit on the 40 or 45 mark, or on the 55 or 60 mark. I know that during my brief history as a drummer I would get tired late in a set and I would start to be “late” or sometimes “early” as a way of compensating for this.

No one else would hear it, but I knew I was missing the perfect beat over and over, and it would bother the shit out of me.

For me, one of the greatest snare-hit kings of major classic rock bands was Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones. It was amazing how close to the perfect mark he would come, time and again, over and over. I also love the perfect snap of those session drummers on ’60s Motown songs. I know I feel an amazing electric thrill every time I hear a drummer who’s exactly on it.

I say the same two things every year. One, I haven’t been to a New Year’s Eve party in ages. And two, my last really cool New Year’s Eve celebration happened 12 years ago in Paris. But as I have nothing new to say, it couldn’t hurt to post the best-written humbug rants from the last four or five years.

The most beautiful Xmas gift I’ve received over the holiday…cheers! I was away in NYC until three or four days ago so I only received it last night from a Los Angeles friend.

Posted last year: “There’s nothing fills me with such spiritual satisfaction as my annual naysaying of this idiotic celebration of absolutely nothing.

“I love clinking glasses with cool people at cool parties, but celebrating renewal by way of the hands of a clock and especially in the company of party animals making a big whoop-dee-doo has always felt like a huge humiliation.

“Only idiots believe in the idea of a of a midnight renewal. Renewal is a constant. Every morning…hell, every minute marks the potential start of something beautiful and cleansing, and perhaps even transforming. So why hang back and celebrate a rite that denies this 24/7 theology, and in a kind of idiot-monkey way with party hats and noisemakers?

“I would feel differently if I was in Paris or Prague or Rome. It’s another thing over there.”

Posted four years ago: “My all-time best New Year’s Eve happened in Paris on the 1999-into-2000 Millenium year — standing about two city blocks in front of the Eiffel Tower and watching the greatest fireworks display ever orchestrated in human history. And then walking all the way back to Montmartre with thousands on the streets after the civil servants shut the subway down at 1 a.m.”

Posted three years ago: “I need to stay in the city until sometime in the early morning, despite the intense cold and wind. I live below a family of animals — Hispanic party elephants — who stomp around and play music so loud that the building throbs and the plaster cracks. It’s a fairly safe bet they’re going to lose their minds tonight so I may as well just huddle down in the city and bounce around from bar to bar. New Year’s Eve is the emptiest holiday ritual of the year, and an opportunity for shallow under-30s to act like assholes.”

Posted five years ago: “I’d say ‘Happy New Year’ to everyone, but…all right, ‘Happy New Year.’ But I’ve always hated saying those words. Nothing’s ‘happy’ by way of hope. Happy is discovered, earned, lucked into, found. At best, people are content, joyously turned on for the moment, laughing or telling a funny story or a good joke, placated, relaxed, energetic, enthused, full of dreams, generous of heart, intellectually alive…but ‘happy’? The word itself has always struck me as one that only simple minds would use.

“I’m only drinking Monster and Perrier tonight, and I’m not forking over $14 to any bartenders for a drink. Anywhere. I don’t care who I’m with or what anyone thinks of this policy/attitude. I’ll give $14 to a homeless person first. I won’t give my hard-earned money to anyone or anything that rubs me the wrong way tonight. I hate everything about New Year’s Eve, especially young guys going ‘ooowwwoooaaagghh!’ in animal bars as midnight approaches.

“We all know the same mistakes are going to be made over the next twelve months, and that the only thing certain is that everything will be more expensive twelve months from now. The only comfort I have is this: the morons who believe global warming is a myth are going to meet each other at parties and get married and have kids and try to teach their children that global warming is a myth, but a significant number of these people are going to fail in this effort because kids always see through their parents’ bullshit.”

From the Wiki page: “‘Auld Lang Syne=’ is a Scottish poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 and set to the tune of a traditional folk song. The title may be translated into English literally as “old long since”, or more idiomatically, ‘long long ago’, ‘days gone by’ or ‘old times.'”

Dennis Lim‘s Brad Pitt interview in the 1.1.12 edition of the New York Times reads like a slightly sheepish confession of a guy (i.e., Lim) who went out on a blind date and…well, had an okay time but not a great one either. Lim is an intensely scholastic monk-dweeb and Pitt is obviously Pitt, and the twains just didn’t have a chance, man.

Lim sat down with Pitt at the Waldorf Astoria in early December. “Many of his answers had the vague, scripted ring of someone determined not to say more than necessary,” Lim writes. On top of which Pitt was “slightly awkward and distractible when facing questions,” and “seemed self-conscious about his pro forma responses.”

Blunter Lim: “I couldn’t get going with this guy…Jesus! Why couldn’t he relax into the groove of my Manhattan film-dweeb consciousness and just open up and let loose and kick the ball around? Scott Foundas and I can talk for hours about anything. This was a chore!”

Best passage: “Like any seasoned pro on the Oscar circuit, Pitt was careful to sound appreciative without stooping to the vulgarity of campaigning. ‘I’ve been around long enough to know it’s very fickle and it’s a cyclical wheel,’ he said. ‘But I will say this: It is surprisingly fun when your number comes up.'”

Second best passage: “Having just flown in from France for the premiere of Angelina Jolie‘s directorial debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey, dressed down in a long-sleeve V-neck and casual pants, Mr. Pitt was fighting fatigue and jet lag. (He downed two Starbucks cappuccinos, delivered by a Waldorf employee.) He gamely endured a photo shoot and a 90-minute conversation but lost his train of thought several times (‘I’m sorry, man, I am so upside down right now’), and after a mid-interview bathroom break, he made a sheepish confession: ‘I did the whole photo shoot with my fly undone.'”