When Movieline‘s Stu VanAirsdale explained last night that The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is doing fairly well commercially, the David Fincher film was at $79 million and change after three weeks in theatres. Right now it’s at $81,180,000, according to Box Office Mojo.

From an 8.18.11 post: “Truly primal laughter is never about any one event or mishap or whatever. It’s usually about the release of tension and frustration, and it’s completely unsuppressable if you feel you’re exposing some careless, thoughtless or callous part of yourself.”

This out-take is from the Moneyball Bluray, which I received a couple of days ago.

My first impression from this trailer is that Peter Jackson and director Amy Berg‘s West of Memphis, a doc that will screen at Sundance 2012, is slicker and artier looking than Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky‘s three docs on the exact same Arkansas-murder-case subject. Which indicates than West of Memphis has more money behind it. Which isn’t surprising with Jackson producing.

Berlinger and Sinofsky docs are titled Paradise Lost: The Murders at Robin Hood Hills (’96), Paradise Lost 2: Revelations (’00) and Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (playing this month on HBO). They’re all about the wrongly convicted Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr., a.k.a., the “West Memphis Three”, who were convicted of the 1994 murders of three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas.

In France it was once called MS ONE: Maximum Security. It was also called Lockout at one time or another. But now this Luc Besson-y sci-fi machismo thriller is called Escape From M.S. One…I guess. Does anyone have a favorite? Open Road is releasing it stateside in mid-April. “A man (Guy Pearce) wrongly convicted of espionage is offered his freedom if he can rescue the president’s daughter (Maggie Grace) from an outer space prison taken over by violent inmates”…thud.

You can sense the less-than-full-throttle energy levels in the opening moments of Kris Tapley and Anne Thompson‘s latest Oscar Talk podcast. It’s the faint aroma of lethargy and “the fix is in” boredom of the Oscar season made vocal. Don’t we all feel this? “The favorite is clearly The Artist…I don’t even remember what the nominees for the Golden Globes are”…zzzz.

Tapley says he hears that A Separation “might not even get nominated” by the Oscar committee. WHAT?

I was in Telluride four and a half months ago, and here’s what I wrote: “Rank-and-file festivalgoers are creaming over The Artist…every Telluride viewer I’ve spoken to loves it…and I think it’s just a clever, assured, highly diverting curio — a tribute to the lore of black-and-white silent cinema and the divergent-Hollywood-career plot used by Singin’ in the Rain and A Star Is Born.

“And women of all shapes and sizes and social classes love The Help, and we all know the name of that tune.

“So what am I to do? Do a flip-flop and say I was wrong but now I’ve seen the light? Twist my neck 180 degrees like Linda Blair in The Exorcist?

“I don’t think so. I know precisely how good these films are, and they’re both con jobs. They aren’t Illuminating Truth-Tellers. They aren’t addressing the deep bedrock stuff. They’re highly accomplished entertainments, but don’t tell me they’re serious Best Picture contenders. Neither one dramatizes or illuminates some aspect of our common experience all that primally or skillfully or meaningfully.

“They’re about their own realms and realities — the racist South of the early ’60s, the movie business in the late 1920s. You come out the theatre saying, ‘Well, that was good but it wasn’t about any place I live in…later.’

“If they become Best Picture nominees, fine. If Hollywood Elsewhere gets to run ads supporting these films, great. And if one of them wins….naah, won’t happen.”

Wrong!

Earlier today Deadline‘s Michael Fleming posted an interview with producer Scott Rudin (Moneyball, The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and to judge from the attention paid so far, Rudin’s remark about The King’s Speech being “a less complex film” than The Social Network is the money quote.

But why? What is so startling about anyone, even a homeless guy standing around on Ninth Avenue, observing this? Who in the world thinks that The King’s Speech is more complex than The Social Network? Ridiculous.

More Rudin: “The Social Network was probably one of the two or three things I’ve done in my life that I’m most proud of. I’m not going to engage in what about it was disappointing. There’s nothing about it I was disappointed in.”

Kevin MacDonald‘s Marley, a doc about the legendary Jamaican raggae star (and the Wailers, of course), will screen next month at the Berlin Film Festival. McDonald (Touching The Void, Life In A Day) spoke about the film last summer during a junket. He claims that Marley was “the most influential musician of the 20th century by far.” Really? More so than Elvis, Dylan and the Beatles? What under-30 music lover can name more than a couple of Marley tunes, if that?

Contraband (Universal, 1.13) is a low-rent action programmer that thousands of people will presumably pay to see this weekend and then say shit to each other on the way out. “Aaahh, it was all right…it had some okay stuff…sure. Who am I kidding? We all just sat there….waste of time…whose idea was it to see this? Mark Wahlberg…guy’s an actor, can’t win ’em all, right? Who’s the guy who played the younger brother of Kate Beckinsale? Caleb Landry Jones? Guy’s an asshole. Wahlberg saying ‘he’s family, he’s my brother in law, I gotta help him out, make it right.’ Guy’s a waste of skin, they shoulda cut him loose. And Giovanni Ribisi…Jesus! Everytime I see him he’s playing a greasy, bearded, lowlife scumbag. He needs to give that a rest. Really.”

7:02 pm: Best Picture: The Artist. Wells comment: Easily one of the slightest, least substantial and least interesting Best Picture favorites in the history of the motion picture industry. People who voted for this film are emotional-default chumps and should really be ashamed of themselves. The Artist is a nice, likable, light-hearted film — neat concept, nothing wrong with it. But I spit on those who are calling it the best of the best.” (Lumenick: “The cameraman got Harvey Weinstein on the first try this time! Bravo!.”) Indiewire’s list of all the CCMA winners.

6:53 pm: Best Actor: George Clooney, The Descendants. Wells comment: I would have preferred to see Moneyball‘s Brad Pitt take it, but Clooney is open and wounded and hurting and quite good in Alexander Payne‘s drama. (Lumenick: “This house band is from hunger.”)

6:43 pm: Best Actress: Viola Davis, The Help. Wells comment: Davis doesn’t play a lead in The Help but whatever…a great actress, deserves her moment…fine with it. (Lumenick: “Sure hope this happens at an actual awards ceremony.”)

6:31 pm: Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist. Wells comment: Disagree, undeserved, overpraised, thumbs down.

6:23 pm Update: Best Original Screenplay: Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris; Best Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin, Steve Zaillian, Moneyball. (Lumenick: “Editing of presentation makes no sense, like anything else at CCMA show.”) Wells comment: Good fellows, great scripts.

Earlier: I’ve been working on a couple of things and not paying attention to the currently-underway Critics’ Choice Movie Awards at the Hollywood Palladium. The tally as of 6 pm: Acting Ensemble award: The Help; Best Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer, The Help; Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, Beginners; Best Comedy Award: Bridesmaids; Best Animated Film: Rango; Best Foreign Film: A Separation; Best Young Actor or Actress: Thomas Horn, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.

N.Y. Post critic Lou Lumenick is hilariously cranky on Twitter: “This is the worst awards show I have ever seen — set, cameras, lights, sound — it’s just horrible!! Scorsese is probably wishing he could fix the sound mix…the interiors in Barry Lyndon look brighter than this…Does Dylan have a no-close-up clause? Or are they just forgetting to do them?…Scorsese seems to be struggling to hear his own award presentation. Sound is incredibly lousy. Not easy to make some of the most attractive people in the world look they came straight out of a casket. Oh, and by the way Marty, you also won the documentary award. Now get the hell off the stage. ”

Earlier this afternoon a person of accomplishment and respect informed me that the way to pronounce the last name of Michel Hazanavicius, director of The Artist, is first of all to drop the “h” and say “azah-nava-shoosh .” That didn’t sound right. All along I’ve been saying “Hahznahvicious,” as in Sid Vicious, and I’ve been to France eight or nine times so I know a little something about the tongue.

So I double-checked with a couple of Weinstein Co. publicists, and one of them said you need to pronounce it (this is how she wrote it in the email) “Ahzahnavishus.” Another vote for Sid Vicious! I’m sorry, but I’m standing by this pronunciation. I can’t roll with Michel Azanavashoosh…stupid. Can anyone settle this, or at least tell me I’m right in not agreeing with the above-referenced “person of accomplishment and respect”?

What’s with the female narrator? I’ve been to this realm before, and I’m not sure there’s anything very special to be had except for Eva Green‘s nudity. Perfect Sense (IFC Flms, 2.10) played at Sundance a year ago and then opened in England last October. Director David McKenzie‘s last half-decent effort was Young Adam (’03), another film with Ewan McGregor dropping trou.