If it’s a Mr. Mudd production (Lianne Halfon, John Malkovich, Russell Smith), you know it’s okay and perhaps better than that. Directed and written by Stephen Chbosky, and based on Chbosky’s 1999 novel. Set in Pittsburgh and possibly a little precious but let’s give it a break for now. Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Ezra “warlock-eyed demon from Hell” Miller, Paul Rudd, Melanie Lynskey, etc.

Mad Men‘s Lane Pryce (Jared Harris) is no more, and as I write these words I can hear the shriekings of 10,000 spoiler whiners. Pryce’s blotchy neck and bluish tongue have been written about all over the place. Harris even gave an interview to TV journos on Monday morning to talk it over. I read about it myself before catching the episode in question (“Commissions and Fees”, which I’m now watching for the third time) — do you think I cared?

Roger Sterling (chuckling after hanging up the phone): “25 year-old coat check girl from Long Island. Or Rhode Island. She’d never had room service before. Too easy.”

Don Draper: ‘Why do we do this?”

Sterling: “For the sex. But it’s always disappointing. For me, anyway.”

I also loved it when Draper’s 12 (13?) year-old daughter told her platonic boyfriend that she can’t walk across Central Park with him (i.e., east to west) because “we don’t go across the park — there are bums on the other side.” Which of course there were in the mid ’60s. On the Upper West Side, I mean. Particularly Columbus Ave. It never ceases to amaze that the area adjacent to the 72nd and Columbus IRT station was “Needle Park” (i.e., where you would go to cop smack) as recently as the early ’70s.

I have to post this scene every two or three years. It cleans out the blood. That actor interviewing Brooks owns this scene — it’s totally about him. Watch his eye flickerings and hand gestures as he listens to Brooks explain his professional background — astonishing performance. A lifetime of penal servitude in a New Mexico backwater comes gushing out with a few choice remarks. Brooks is a complete straight man here. His only funny bit is in the way he says he knows who Rodney Dangerfield is, etc.

Drew McWeeny vs. David Poland — name-callings, TV credits, bitch-slappings, testy slingshots — with Joe Leydon chiming in from time to time.

When David Poland informs you of a profound and despicable failing in your character or professional conduct, there are only two things you can do in response: (a) submit to the ministrations of a 17th Century doctor and allow your veins to be opened and just let the evil pour out into apothecary jars, for your sins are so foul and pernicious that they have surely manifested in the blood, or (b) throw yourself onto the steps of a nearby temple and stab yourself to death. There’s no third way. Well, there is. Ignore Rabbi Dave’s tedious sermonizing and finger-wagging.

Yesterday afternoon Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino and I discussed Snow White and the Huntsman and Prometheus and the tragedy of killing a bear just because he ate a dead guy that he found in a parked car. We also discussed Ridley Scott‘s Alien and James Cameron‘s Aliens, Chris Nolan‘s Insomnia and Dark Knight Rises fatigue. Here’s a stand-alone mp3 link.

I visited Cafe Louvre yesterday afternoon for a brief sit and a cappucino, and then walked south of Narodni for a bit. I could see it would be raining in a few minutes so I stepped into a nothing-fancy steak restaurant — a terra cotta silhouette of a longhorned steer was painted on the wall near the door — and ordered a medium rare cut plus steamed potatoes (slightly buttered and salted) and a lettuce-free salad. It was perfect — best afternoon meal I’ve had in ages. And then the downpour.

On the heels of that highly praised Life of Pi reel that played at Cinemacon some 45-odd days ago, 20th Century Fox will be attaching not a trailer but a full scene or two from Ang Lee‘s 3D literary adaptation to prints of Prometheus (opening 6.8). Which suggests that perhaps something in this vein will turn up online not long after.

The cast of Woody Allen‘s upcoming San Francisco-based film (which the press release pointedly did not call a comedy) will topline Alec Baldwin, Cate Blanchett, Louis C.K., Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Dice Clay, Michael Emerson, Sally Hawkins and Peter Sarsgaard. Pic will actually will be shot in New York and San Fran this summer.

The release states that “this marks Allen’s second time directing in San Francisco — his directorial debut, 1969’s Take The Money and Run, was also set there.” Yeah, and — hello? — Play It Again, Sam (’72), which Allen wrote (based on his play) but Herbert Ross directed, was totally set in San Francisco.

I know nothing but a little voice is telling me Allen’s new pic will be in a somewhat darker vein. Not necessarily dark-dark (not with Louis C.K. and Andrew Dice Clay aboard) but darker than the allegedly pastry-light From Rome With Love and less fanciful than Midnight in Paris. Allen movies go in cycles, and it might be time, maybe, to get out the charcoal and frown things up a bit. No biggie. I could obviously be wrong.

In Hit and Run (Open Road, 8.24), a former getaway driver (Dax Shepard) is squeezed and/or guilt-tripped by former partners-in-crime (Bradley Cooper being one), busts out his Witness Protection Plan identity and takes off with his clueless girlfriend (Kristin Bell in the Cameron Diaz part), pursued by his old pals and a United States Marshal. Shepard and David Palmer co-wrote and co-directed. Tom Arnold, Kristin Chenoweth, Beau Bridges and David Koechner costar.

“It’s abundantly clear how most people view John Edwards: unforgivably hypocritical and falsely pious, the epitome of a terrible husband and father, and a dirty liar to boot,” The American Prospect‘s Ed Moser writes in a 6.4 piece. “Even before his stomach-turning trial began, Edwards’ approval rating was a rock-bottom three percent. Seeing those numbers, it was hard not to feel a little sorry for the guy –especially given the more-than-valid questions about the political motivations and validity of his ultimately unsuccessful prosecution.

“But any such emotions were extinguished on Thursday, after Edwards’ jury hung on five counts and acquitted him on the other.

“He came out of the courtroom a free man, looking like a million well-tanned bucks under the North Carolina sun, with his slick suit and his pasted-down hair and his overeager earnestness. Edwards could have stopped at thanking the jury and his attorneys and his family, and slinked away from the scene — far, far from the public eye, for good. Instead, he delivered a carefully crafted, well-rehearsed comeback speech. ‘I don’t think God’s through with me,’ he declared, saying that he wanted to get back to fighting poverty.

“And then he ensured that he’d be all over the gossip sites the next day by delivering an ode to his daughter by Hunter, ‘my precious Quinn,’ whom he’d never acknowledged in public before.

“The whole oration was vintage John Edwards — in other words, deeply mystifying. You didn’t know what to think: Was he sincerely trying to come honest after all those accumulated lies? Or was he (gulp!) trying to begin resetting public opinion of him so he could somehow revive his public career? Or — ye Gods — his political career?

“You can’t put it past him. You can imagine Edwards thinking: Hey, if Nixon could do it… It’s what the elephantine egos that become powerful politicians do. Once they’ve had your love, they want it back. They must have it. And some do regain favor after a fall. Bill Clinton, anyone?

“But Edwards is not Big Bill. The excesses of Clinton’s private life were part and parcel of what some already loved — and others already hated — about him. Edwards’ misdeeds, like Tiger Woods‘, wrecked his image because they seemed to give the lie to his public persona. He was supposed to be the loyal husband of an unglamorous wife with cancer, the mill-worker’s son who hadn’t forgotten the regular people, the weatherman-handsome young fellow with a brain, a heart, and a smile. It all seemed too good to be true — and then, slowly but surely, it became clear that it was.”