Two or three days ago I read a comment that post-Aurora “movie theatres have become the new airplanes.” That alluded to a certain air of psychological anxiety or uncertainty about a slight possibility that a nutter or two might crawl out of the woodwork and attempt a copycat shooting. There are always a certain percentage of Nervous Nellies in any situation, but are relatively sane and stable people actually toying with that fantasy, even on some deep repressed level?

A little while ago Nikki Finke reported that “NRG research is currently showing that 20% to 25% of the domestic moviegoing audience is still very hesitant to go [to The Dark Knight Rises] this weekend because of the Colorado theater shooting.” Great — it’ll be that much easier to get an IMAX seat on Saturday or Sunday.

Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris‘s Ruby Sparks opened yesterday with a D (74% positive) from Rotten Tomatoes and an E (60% positive) from Metacritic. Presumably an assortment of HE readers have seen it by now — the forum is yours. I’m not feeling much of a current out there, but maybe I need to pay closer attention.

I chickened out in my brief 7.19 review by not commenting on Paul Dano‘s lead performance. It doesn’t really invite you “in” because Dano doesn’t have the easy, confident charm that a romantic film (even a curious one) needs, and because there’s something a little too character-quirky or dorky or super-sensitive about the guy.

I didn’t say anything before because Dano and I both come from the same Connecticut town (Wilton) and I’ve run into him four or five times socially and like him personally and didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He’s an excellent actor but I don’t see myself in him. He has his own particular energy, but he lacks that cocksure vibe, that attitude that results in many of us saying, “This guy’s cool…I want to hang with him a bit.”

Yesterday CNN political research director Robert Yoon reported that Robert Downey, Jr. has donated $40 grand to Barack Obama ‘s campaign. On top of which he dropped a big amount attending George Clooney’s fundraising party for Obama a couple of months ago.

I’m trying to figure how this squares with my December 2011 piece about Downey allegedly being a conservative and a philosophical ally of Mel Gibson. I stand by what I wrote and certainly by what Downey told N.Y. Times reporter David Carr four years ago. Maybe Downey is just one of those guys who is large and contains multitudes or harbors a split personality or…whatever, compartmentalizes various philosophies or something.

Bill Maher has give $1 million to Obama’s campaign, of course, and so has Morgan Freeman.

Other flush Obama contributors (if you want to call a $40,000 or $50,000 donation the sign of a flush bank account) include Bette Midler ($50,000 in June, $60,000 to date), Midler’s actor husband Martin Von Haselberg ($50,000), Billy Crystal ($40,000), Kirk Douglas ($40,000), Eddie Murphy ($40,000), Tom Hanks ($35,800 in May), Rita Wilson ($35,800 in May) and Anne Hathaway ($25,000).

Lesser Hollywood contributors include Jamie Lee Curtis ($2000 in June, $14,000 to date), Bridget Fonda ($600 in June, $2000 to date), Jason Sudeikis ($500), Sam Waterston ($2250 in June, $5000 to date), Olivia Wilde ($2500), Maria Bello ($2500), Topher Grace ($500) and Bernadette Peters ($250).

It’s worth noting that producer Jerry Bruckheimer has given Mitt Romney‘s campaign $40,000. Remember that when you’re forking over your $15 bucks to see The Lone Ranger.

How jazzy and spirit-lifting will the forthcoming 69th Venice Film Festival be? All we can do is spitball at this point, but you have to regard the word of regular Venice Film Festival-attending, emotionally invested critic-journos with a grain of salt. You’re probably better off listening to someone like myself, someone who’s never attended this festival and doesn’t give that much of a shit one way or the other. I’m strictly a Telluride-Toronto-New York kind of guy these days.

Honestly? The only thing that has made me snap to attention is the rumored/expected announcement that Paul Thomas Anderson‘s The Master will have its world debut on the Lido.

Otherwise it feels/looks/seems like a mid-level meh festival…to me anyway. If you want another opinion, ask Guy Lodge.

As expected, Terrence Malick‘s unrated, distributor-seeking To the Wonder, “about a couple in a crisis after returning from a pilgrimage to a holy site in Italy,” will play Venice. The drama, which or may not be laden with internal dialogue-whispers, misty dreamscapes and a tossed-salad structure, costars Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams and Javier Bardem.

Brian De Palma‘s Passion, a remake of the middling Love Crime with Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace, will play the Lido. Unless the tectonic plates have shifted and the world has totally re-ordered itself, it will disappoint, or should I say it will meet the expectations of anyone who knows what the term “late DePalma” or “21st Century DePalma” means? The man peaked in the ’70s and ’80s, hung on to some degree in the ’90s, and is now all but over.

Also Venice-bound:

Ramin Bahrani‘s At Any Price, starring Dennis Quaid and Zac Efron, will play in compettion.

Robert Redford‘s The Company You Keep (aging ’60s radical chased around by dogged pain-in-the-ass journalist pursuing him) will screen out of compettion. As will Jonathan Demme‘s Enzo Avitabile Music Life, a doc, and Spike Lee’s Bad 25, about the 25th anni of Michael Jackson‘s Bad album (i.e., “your butt is mine”).

Harmony Korine‘s Spring Breakers, which stars James Franco as a rapper named ‘Alien’ preying on a couple of teenaged girls…forget it.

Olivier Assayas‘ Something in the Air.

Susanne Bier‘s All You Need is Love.

Marco Bellocchio‘s Dormant Beauty.

Daniele Cipri‘s E stato il figlio.

Takeshi Kitano‘s Outrage: Beyond…sure thing!

Kim Ki-duk‘s Pieta.

The Venice Film Festival will open with Mira Nair‘s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, but the phrase “starring Kate Hudson” instantly takes it down a few pegs. Hudson cannot be redeemed…ever.

Amos Gitai‘s Carmel…never dismiss Gitai!

A doc by Jury president Michael Mann called Witness: Libya.

In his rundown piece about the 69th Venice Film Festival, Variety‘s Nick Vivarelli quotes topper Alberto Barbera as follows: “In preparing Venice I have very much admired and envied my friend and colleague [Cameron Bailey] who heads the Toronto Film Festival. He has an easy job: he can take 350 movies and therefore accept almost anything. We have chosen a much tougher path, in which, after lots of discussions, we had to say ‘no’ a lot. And it was very tough.”

In other words, it’s much easier in a sense to run Walmart than a small boutique catering to a select clientele.

The officially approved trailer for the Wachowski/Tykwer (Warner Bros., 10.26) appears on Apple at 10 am, but until then…

I never feel more wired or attuned or plugged into the hurly burly than when I’m trying to decide which train to go with, the local or the express. What a feeling when you’ve chosen correctly, and what a crushing downer when you haven’t and your train is just sitting there, doing nothing and waiting for nothing as time stands still…blah.

Movieline‘s witty Stu VanAirsdale, a daily columnist and composer of the site’s Oscar Index charts, announced today that he’s pushing on. What happened is that either Movieline owner Jay Penske or a Penske stooge brought in N.Y. Daily News veteran Frank DiGiacamo above VanAirsdale, telling the latter that his copy would henceforth be edited by FDG, and so Stu took the hint. The fact that Movieline also dumped critic Stephanie Zacharek indicates that they’re hoping to tone down the snide urbanity and radiate more of an industry-friendly, go-go attitude.

(l.) Stu VanAirsdale; (r.) Frank Digiacamo

Imagine that the Aurora massacre happened exactly three years earlier — in mid July 2009. And ask yourself what kind of a jam Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglourious Basterds would be in right now with its finale depicting a flaming slaughter inside a Paris movie theatre.

You know that Tarantino and Weinstein Co. chief Harvey Weinstein, who released Basterds on 8.21.09, would be sweating bullets right now. Re-shoot and delay the release date like The Gangster Squad has just done, or hang tough on the presumption that the killing and burning of the Nazi high command in a theatre will be seen as okay because they’re evil fucks who deserve it? I don’t think that would wash.

And by the way, what about the theatre shooting in Bobcat Goldthwaite‘s God Bless America with Joel Murray wiping three or four kids texting or talking on the phone? Different context and satiric intent, of course, but there would still be worries if it was slated to open within the next few weeks or months, I would think. (Thanks to Dave Dubos and a certain director-screenwriter friend for reminding me of these precedents.)

Last night The Hollywood Reporter‘s Gregg Kilday and Matthew Belloni informed that Warner Bros. will probably postone the September 7th release of Ruben Fleischer‘s The Gangster Squad until January 11th, 2013 in order to allow for a reshooting of a scene involving a movie theater shoot-out.

The concern, obviously, is that this scene is too similar to last week’s Aurora massacre, and that it’s better to be safe than sorry by replacing it. The original scene will almost certainly appear on the Bluray down the road…right?

So that’s it — The Gangster Squad is being seen as a compromised, hard-luck film, and is now limping and stooped over and off to the showers. It’ll never again generate any real excitement, not after this. Expectations were a bit dicey to start with (i.e., the Fleischer factor), but now the wind is really out of the sails. If I was running the show I would get the re-shoots done lickety-split and get The Gangster Squad into theatres by late November or December. I’m sorry but a January opening just sends the wrong message.

It’s obviously fine and proper for the Hollywood Reporter to run some articles about the cultural and political after-effects of the Aurora shooting. But somehow that illustration feels a bit wrong. Batman shedding a blood tear? And the title of Gregg Kilday‘s piece, “The Dark Knight Rises Is Still an Oscar Contender,” implies that it may not be a contender in the minds of those who feel the movie is now somewhat “tainted, however unfairly,” as Kilday puts it, due to the Aurora association. Why bring it up then?

It would be the height if venal industry-think to allow the deplorable deed of a single red-haired psychopath to influence anyone’s Best Picture judgment. That has to be one of the stupidest shorthand Academy riffs I’ve ever heard. If anything nominating TDKR for Best Picture would be a refutation of the association that Kilday refers to. On top of which everyone knows that the Academy owes director-writer Chris Nolan for ’09’s Dark Knight snub so anyone even referring to an Aurora association needs to shut up.

Who woulda thunk that Glenn Kenny is a bit of a choirboy when it comes to assessing or judging the turbulent realms of love, longing and heartbreaks? Don’t look now, but arduous and indiscriminate shagging without regard to peace treaties or boundaries or marriage licenses has been going on for thousands of years. Kenny would do well to read “Romantic Revolutionary,” a biography of John Reed. My God, the dinking that went on among the pre-World War I radical-socialist set!

Forget the Twitter captures — just go here and here and piece it together.