Most appealing aspect: The voice of Donald Sutherland (as President Snow) solemnly announcing the basic Hunger Games rules. Most troublesome aspect: Wes Bentley‘s hair and beard stylings. Unseen (at least by me): Woody Harrelson as Haymitch Abernathy, the former Hunger Games champ with a drinking problem.

“Gay roles can win Oscars,” explains Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil, “but only if portrayed by straight people who die hideous deaths.” Do they really have to go hideously? I think that simple dying (as Christopher Plummer‘s gay character does in Beginners) is sufficient. O’Neil has included a photo gallery.

Every now and then I have to explain the rules about saving seats. There are thousands upon thousands who still don’t understand the one absolute rule that applies in theatres and food courts, which is that you have to mark something to save something. It doesn’t matter how or what you mark it with as long as you mark it. A napkin, a jacket, a scarf, a newspaper…anything.

Once that’s done, the seat is absolutely effing saved and no one questions it…least of all myself. But you can’t just point to a couple of seats (or three or four or six) and say, “Oh, those are saved.” Doesn’t work that way. Ask any animal in any jungle. If you want to mark your territory, you have to urinate upon it. Every animal in the world gets this. No argument, it’s law.

The incident happened two nights ago in the Century City food court adjacent to the AMC movie plex. I had some Chinese on the tray and was looking for a seat at a table. It was very crowded — no separate, unoccupied tables. So I chose one next to a table that a woman and her young son were sitting down at. As I was about to sit down the woman looked at me and said, “Uhhm, that table’s saved…two others are coming.” No markings on either seat but I let it go.

So I went over to another table that was kissing a table that a young couple were sitting at. “Sorry,” the guy said, shrugging and smiling sweetly, placing his hand on one of the white plastic seats. “We’re holding this for friends.”

So I went over to another unmarked table that was next to one that a 40ish woman was sitting at with a son or daughter…I forget which. “Uhhm, this is for the rest of our family,” she said. “Actually, no…I don’t think it is,” I said, sitting down with my tray. “As far as I can tell every empty table in this food court is being held for someone else, and as this one isn’t marked, I’m sitting in it. No offense.”

“But my husband is sitting there,” she said.

“No, actually…I am,” I said. “You have to mark the seat, you see. If you don’t mark it, it’s fair game. Sorry.”

“Why don’t you sit somewhere else?,” she said.

“I’d be delighted to,” I answered, “but every last seat in this food court is being saved for someone.”

The husband came over with his tray. His face was pained, anguished. “You’re going to break up a family?,” he said. I repeated the basic rule: “Look, man…you can’t legitimately save a seat unless you mark it. It’s very simple. Mark it and you’re fine. This seat wasn’t marked so that’s that. I have the same rights as you.”

“I can’t believe you, you’re such an asshole!,” the woman said. “This is why you’re sitting alone!”

I agreed with her. “Yes, you’re right. I’m absolutely an asshole and that’s why I’m alone. No argument with that. But you didn’t mark the seat and that’s a fact.”

“God…asshole!,” the woman repeated. Her child was not enjoying this.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said again. “I am that. Definitely, no argument. Just try marking the seat next time.”

So they went somewhere else and sat down and ate their food, and I ate mine and then I left. Will they think about marking their seats next time? Of course not. Assholes don’t change their spots.

It hit me as I was watching the M.A.S.H. Bluray the other night that a nice plotless comedy would be agreeable right about now. “Plotless” is crucial — a film that forgoes the usual story mechanics and just ambles along on flip irreverence and attitude, and then ends about 105 minutes later when one or two of the original trio get new jobs or whatever.

I don’t know what this plotless comedy would be about, but a lot of people have forgotten that the original M.A.S.H. guys (Elliot Gould, Donald Sutherland, Tom Skerritt) were a tiny bit smug and even arrogant, and that they threw their weight around when they could, and that they didn’t tolerate officious fools or kneejerk authority-worshippers or goodie-goodies of any kind. They enjoyed humiliating people they didn’t like. And they certainly weren’t smooth sweethearts like the TV M.A.S.H. crew (Alan Alda, Wayne Rogers, etc.).

There’s no telling what Yogi Berra really thinks of Moneyball, to go by Jason Gay‘s 11.7 Wall Street Journal article. Berra is a national treasure, but aging’s definitely a bitch. Your ears and nose get larger, your eyes turn pink and bloodshotty, and your teeth either turn yellow or get smaller, or both.

During this morning’s Oscar Poker chat (to be posted later tonight or tomorrow morning), Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino voiced a data-based hunch that The Artist (Weinstein Co., 11.23) is going to do “Hurt Locker-level business,” or a domestic gross south of $15 million. Which is what it’ll probably make if every over-40 film Catholic buys a ticket. Which is what I’ve been urging this crowd to do all along. But if it stops at $12 million or so, what will this mean in terms of a potential Best Picture nom…if anything?

I’m a little surprised that Cameron Crowe‘s We Bought A Zoo (20th Century Fox, 12.23) runs only 90 minutes. (Or so says the Wiki page.) That feels a little slender. Substantial films need to run 100 to 110 minutes and beyond, no? On top of which the poster gives me pause. It feels so Dean Jones, so family-friendly, so sunshine-smiley, so Paul Simon Kodachrome-d.

Crowe has had his ups and downs, but he’s an ambitious director-writer of depth. Or at least he was the last time I checked. Why is Fox marketing his latest film as the kind of thing that people like me are going to scowl and crack wise about?

** Obviously there are exceptions — Days of Heaven, Zelig, etc.

One of the more significant takeaways from Truman Capote‘s “In Cold Blood” was a belief or theory that on their own, neither Perry Smith nor Dick Hickock would have killed the Clutter family in November 1959; but together they formed a combustible third personality. They goaded each other into a homicidal frame of mind.

By the same token I think that the popularity of bad, coarse or synthetic high-impact films happens due to groups of under-25s choosing to see them because the films are reductive and lowball and crowd-friendly and can be more readily “enjoyed” by a group of three or four than smarter or more subtle or serious-minded films, which are primarily made for and aimed at semi-thoughtful individuals or couples.

On their own Beavis or Butthead might not be all that interested in seeing The Immortals or Jack and Jill; but as a moviegoing wolf pack they form a more primitive third personality that prefers to see something that, yes, might be ludicrously awful but which they can at least have fun reacting to, going “tee-hee-hee” together and snorting between sips of Coke and so forth.

So it’s not really under-25 viewers on a personality-by-personality basis who have idiot taste buds but groups of under-25s — that’s the thing. A smart film like Moneyball will play well with singles and couples, but not so much to young wildebeest herds.

I was dumb enough to recently buy the non-restored, public-domain One-Eyed Jacks Bluray the other day. I had this idea that it might look a tiny bit better than the version sitting on YouTube. Or perhaps in the realm of the laser disc version I owned in the ’90s, which was tolerable. Well, the Bluray is awful — positively the cruddiest-looking film I’ve ever seen on any home-video format, including broadcast TV.

YouTube capture #1

It’s just tragic. The elements of this, Paramount’s last VistaVision film, are, I’ve been told, in good or very good shape, and it could look like a jewel on a remastered Bluray if the copyright issue could be somehow resolved. It’s been a public doman title for several years.

The only film directed by Marlon Brando, One-Eyed Jacks “has been hailed by Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino,” Jeremy Richey wrote in early ’08, “one that signaled the rise of a more violent and cynical cinema, but for some reason it’s never really gotten its due.

“The main reason for its continuing dismissal in some circles is that it remains a compromised film. After a gruelling six months worth of shooting Brando either ran out of steam while editing, or the film was finally just taken away from him or most likely, both.

YouTube capture #2

“It is known for sure that Brando’s original five hour cut was whittled down to the 141 minutes we have now, and the incredibly bleak ending (Pina Pellicer being shot and killed by Karl Malden during the final gun battle) was changed.

“Even in it’s compromised state One-Eyed Jacks remains a visionary film and a totally unique one. It’s impact can be felt in the American Westerns that followed by Sam Peckinpah, Monte Hellman and Arthur Penn; and also in the European westerns that would gain prominence just a few years later.

“One-Eyed Jacks seems like a clear precursor not only to Sergio Leone but to a breed of mystical European Westerns like Sergio Corbucci‘s The Grand Silence and Enzo Castellari‘s Keoma.”

YouTube capture #3

Is there a divide between critics/bloggers and paying audience over J. Edgar? Or are most people seeing it, like I did, as a half-and-halfer — highly impressive Leonardo DiCaprio performance and assured direction but a generally drab sit, meh subject matter, pounds of makeup, etc.?

The only half-interesting films opening this weekend are Lars von Trier‘s Melancholia and Willliam Monahan‘s London Boulevard. Interesting failures, I mean. Which I’d rather see any day of the week over stuff like The Immortals and Jack and Jill.

Boulevard starts nicely but doesn’t come together. The second half is a mess, but it’s the kind of floundering mess that only a person of talent and vision (i..e, director-writer William Monahan) could create. Melancholia has flashes of brilliance, but is mostly morose and enervated. But it’s “out there,” at least, and that’s always worth a looksee.

Monahan’s film “is more concerned with style than story,” I wrote last month. “It feels oddly misshapen and off-balance at times. It devolves into a bloody body-drop festival about halfway through, the color looks oddly washed out and Monahan uses The Yardbird’s “Heartful of Soul” on the soundtrack three times. It’s telling or curious that Monahan casts himself (or someone who looks an awful lot like him) as a Knightley-stalking paparazzo who stares but never shoots.”

I’ve posted my Cannes Film Festival Melancholia review twice now, but maybe if I re-arrange the graphs it’ll seem fresher.

Melancholia “is a stylishly nutso, half-intriguing, semi-bombastic ensemble piece about despair in the face of eventual ruination. It’s never ‘boring’ but only rarely gripping. It’s Von Trier, after all, but when all is said and done it’s basically a downhill swamp-trudge with tiny little pop-throughs from time to time.

“It’s a morose, meditative in-and-outer that begins stunningly if not ecstatically and concludes…well, as you might expect a film about the end of the world to wrap itself up.

“‘It isn’t about the end of the world but a state of mind,’ Von Trier said during last May’s Cannes press conference. My thinking exactly. But it’s also a more striking thing for where it starts and what it attempts than how it plays.

“And yet I believe it’s the best…make that the gloomiest, most ambitious and craziest film Kirsten Dunst has ever starred in. Way bolder than Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It’s kind of La Notte-esque, now that I think about it. Dunst pretty much scowls all through Melancholia and does three nude scenes. What I really mean, I suppose, is that she’s never operated in such a dark, fleshy and grandiose realm.

“I felt elation only in the very beginning, and somewhat at the very end. But otherwise it mostly felt like a meditative slog. It’s not without its intrigues but it lacks tension and a through-line and a story, really, of any kind.

“After the stunning, tableau-like, slow-motion opening, Melancholia gets down to basic business. Situation, circumstance, character, mood.

“Justine (Dunst) is getting married to Michael (Alexander Skarsgard) and her control-freak sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) has orchestrated the wedding with her husband’s (Keifer Sutherland) money, and not the funds of Dunst’s father (John Hurt). Charlotte Rampling has a couple of scenes as Dunst’s blunt, cynical mom.

“But right after the wedding Justine slips into gloom-head nihilism and suddenly stops being attentive to Skarsgaard and starts meandering and moping around and fucking some guy (Brady Corbet) she barely knows near a golf course sandtrap.

“Did I mention that the Earth is apparently on some kind of collision course with a planet called Melancholia, which has recently emerged from behind the sun? And that no one turns on a TV news station throughout the whole film, and that Gainsbourgh goes online only once?

“The movie is never ‘boring’ but only rarely gripping. It’s Von Trier, after all, but when all is said and done it’s basically a downhill swamp-trudge with tiny little pop-throughs from time to time.

“There’s an overhead tracking shot of two horseback riders galloping down a trail during a foggy morning that’s heartstoppingly beautiful. That plus the beginning I will never, ever forget.

“Death dance, death art…when worlds collide. Von Trier had a mildly intriguing idea here but didn’t know what to do with it, or he perhaps didn’t care to try. All he does is riff about how tradition and togetherness are over and very few of us care. My sense is that Von Trier experimented and jazz-riffed his way through most of the filming.

“All I know is that I feel the way Dunst’s Justine feels during most of the film, and I’m not dealing with the end of the world. Vaguely scared, unsettled…something’s coming.”

To me a birthday is simultaneously meaningless and a reminder that you’re a little closer to death than you were at this time last year. But today’s is difficult to ignore with all the Facebook greetings coming in, and with three friends (Svetlana Cvetko, Sasha Stone, Tom O’Neil) hosting a little birthday brunch this morning. Nice mood pocket.

People of interest and accomplishment who were born on November 12th include Ryan Gosling, Jacques Tourneur, Neil Young, Auguste Rodin, Tonya Harding (yeesh), Anne Hathaway, Grace Kelly, Alexandra Maria Lara (Control, Downfall), Patrice Leconte, Charles Manson (good God), Jack Oakie, Kim Hunter, director Richard Quine, Wallace Shawn, Sammy Sosa, Jo Stafford and DeWitt Wallace.

Svetlana Cvetko, Sasha Stone — Saturday, 11.12, 11:20 am at Le Pain Quotidien.