The one thing I didn’t like very much about Rise of the Planet of the Apes is Ceasar’s unnaturally deep, vaguely creepy voice. This was a concession, I felt, to a basic Hollywood notion that formidable warrior figures have to sound snarly and tough and commanding in some primal way. But if you’ve seen footage of a talking ape (as I have) you know they don’t have deep, dark voices but ones that are on the soft, high-pitched side. They sound like very old white men. So while the line “Ceasar is home” worked, the delivery didn’t.

Reports about Anne Hathaway‘s stunt double having driven her Catwoman chopper right into an IMAX camera yesterday (i.e., Monday) on the set of The Dark Knight Rises don’t say if the camera was totalled or partly damaged or what. The TMZ Video shows the bike hitting the camera at a relatively slow speed, and that some of the damage (whatever it amounts to) will be from the IMAX camera having been dropped by the cameraman.

What does an IMAX camera cost? $350,000? A half million? Even if was completely destroyed (which I doubt), keep two things in mind: (1) There’s a mention on The Dark Knight‘s iMDB page that “while filming [a] chase scene with the Joker and the SWAT vans, one of only four IMAX cameras in the world at that time was destroyed.” And (2) this pales compared to the 1958 incident on the set of Ben-Hur when a $100,000 65mm camera was totally destroyed during the filming of the chariot race. The Dollartimes inflation converter says a 1958 dollar would be worth $7.72 in 2011, so the smashed Ben-Hur camera cost filmmakers the equivalent of $772,000.

The same basic despair expressed by my recent “Hillary Should Have Won” riff was concurrently written and reported about by The Daily Beast‘s Leslie Bennetts. “During the last few days, the whispers have swelled to an angry chorus of frustration about [President] Obama’s perceived weaknesses,” she wrote. “Many Democrats are furious and heartbroken at how ineffectual he seemed in dealing with Republican opponents over the debt ceiling, and liberals are particularly incensed by what they see as his capitulation to conservatives on fundamental liberal principles.”

The American middle-classes have never and will never take to the streets to vent anger about anything, ever. Despair and quiet grumbling and prescription drugs is as far as it goes over here. But wouldn’t it feel…well, therapeutic on some level if something could happen in the streets of the U.S. of A. that would express basic fundamental rage about how the corporate elites are turning (have turned?) this country into South America, and how the radical legislative right has gone completely insane, etc.?

I know what’s going on in England right now — young have-nots are enraged at drastic cuts in social spending by David Cameron‘s conservative government. It’s obviously a vastly different picture and climate, but this country so needs to get mad, mad, Peter Finch-mad.

Why have Warner Bros. and Clint Eastwood decided not to screen J.Edgar at both the Toronto and the New York Film Festivals? The first thought, of course, is a slight “uh-oh…” but that kind of dissolves once you think it through. This won’t be the first time an Eastwood fllick hasn’t made the festival rounds so it’s not that big a deal. Clint has never been a big festival guy.

The fact that Toronto critics beat up Hereafter pretty badly is a possible factor, okay, but they might simply have decided it’s better for the buzz to start a bit closer to the 11.9 release date. There’s nothing inherently wrong with waiting for the right moment.

My problem with this film all along has been the physical disparity factor, or the six-foot-tall Leonardo DiCaprio playing the short, squat and bulldog-ish J. Edgar Hoover. The above photo makes Leo seem shorter than he actually is, and I’m wondering if somehow he’s been made to look smaller through the use of large furniture and tall costars (like the 6′ 5″ Armie Hammer) and extra-tall doorways and all that. This was how Marion Cotillard was made to look Edith Piaf-sized in La Vie en Rose, so maybe.

Knowing Clint as I do, the Gay Edgar Hoover angle will be “there,” but in a vaguely suppressed, played-down way, which of course would be appropriate for the rigidly homophobic era during which the saga of J. Edgar and Clyde took place.

In April 2010 I read and reported about Dustin Lance Black‘s script, to wit:

“The scenes between Hoover and FBI ally/colleague/friendo Clyde Tolson (whose last name Black spells as ‘Toulson’) are fairly pronounced in terms of sexual intrigue and emotional ties between the two. Theirs is absolutely and without any qualification a gay relationship, Tolson being the loyalty-demanding, bullshit-deflating ‘woman’ and Hoover being the gruff, vaguely asexual ‘man’ whose interest in Tolson is obviously there and yet at the same time suppressed.

“The script flips back and forth in time from decade to decade, from the 1920s (dealing with the commie-radical threat posed by people like Emma Goldman) to the early ’30s (the focus being on the Charles Lindbergh baby kidnapping case) to Hoover’s young childhood to the early ’60s (dealing with the Kennedy brothers), the mid to late ’60s (Martin Luther King‘s randy time-outs) and early ’70s (dealing with Nixon‘s henchmen). Old Hoover, young Hoover, etc. Major pounds of makeup for Leo, I’m guessing.”

To put it as succinctly and shallowly as possible, I’m not a fan of Justin Timberlake‘s tennis-ball coif in Andrew Niccol‘s In Time (20th Century Fox, 10.28). His Social Network hair was cool, but the Buchenwald cut is a stopper. And it didn’t look good on Brad Pitt either in Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

Plus I’ve been scared of Niccol ever since Niccol’s script of The Truman Show because it ends kinda badly — Jim Carrey should have escaped at the end of Act Two and then returned to the fake superdome world at the end of Act Three because the real world is too tough for a TV-land character to survive in. Then I really turned off after S1m0ne.

But tomorrow’s another day, I suppose. I’m ready to forgive. Lords of War wasn’t too bad.

Emotional dialogue doesn’t have to be treacly or obvious. It’s fairly awful, in fact, when filmmakers have their characters say “this is who I really am and this is what I’ve always wanted,” etc. I can’t think of a more sickening use of the gooey stuff than in the middle-school graduation scene in Crazy, Stupid, Love. And I can’t think of a better, less sentimental, polar-opposite case than Thomas Mitchell‘s death scene in Only Angels Have Wings.

Mitchell’s “Kid” is lying flat. Cary Grant‘s “Geoff” is standing a foot or two away, looking down. A few others are huddled nearby.

Kid: Geoff, tell this guy to quit fussing with me, will ya? I’m all right.

Geoff: Let him alone, Doc.

Kid: Cigarette, Papa?

Geoff: Sure. (He holds his cigarette to the Kid’s mouth.) Here.

Kid: How’s the other guy?

Geoff: Hands burned and one side of his face.

Kid: He’s all right, Geoff. Could’ve jumped but he didn’t. Just sat right there and took it like it was an ice cream soda. Buy him a drink for me, will ya?

Geoff: Sure I will.

Kid: Hadn’t been for those birds, we’d have made it.

Geoff: Sure you would.

Kid: I’d make a windshield at an angle and they’d bounce off.

Geoff: Not a bad idea.

Kid: I’ll make you a present of it, Papa. When I get on my feet, we’ll work it out. Or will we?

Geoff: Your neck’s broken, Kid.

Kid: Funny. Wondered why I couldn’t feel anything. Well, guess this is it, then. Bad sport. Gee.

Geoff: What is it, fella?

Kid: Get that bunch outta here, quick.

Geoff: (To everyone) Get out of here. Hurry up. You too, Doc, use both feet. (They leave. Geoff turns back.) What is it fella? Come on, you can tell me.

Kid: I didn’t want them to see me.

Geoff: Sure, sure.

Kid: I’m not scared, Geoff.

Geoff: Of course you’re not.

Kid: It’s just that…it’s like doing something new. Like when I made my first solo. I didn’t want anybody watching then, either.

Geoff: Yeah.

Kid: I don’t know how good I’m gonna be at this.

Geoff: Do you want me to go too?

Kid: I’d hate to pull a boner in front of you, Geoff.

Geoff: Sure, sure I know. Here y’are, boy. (He gives him a last puff on his cigarette.) So long, Kid.

Kid: So long, Geoff.

For the first time in my professional life I’ll be attending the Telluride Film Festival, which starts in three and half weeks and runs from 9.2 through 9.5. Thanks to Shannon Mitchell for cutting me a nice break with the press credential deadline, and also to co-directors Tom Luddy and Gary Meyer for presumably approving this. I’ve read and heard about this festival for so many years, and now…finally.

I’ve never done Telluride before because of the high cost, but I’m doing reasonably well these days and I’ve figured a way to afford it, despite the bruising $780 tab for a festival pass. One, I’ll be round-tripping into Albuquerque, New Mexico for $300 and change and then renting a car and driving up to Telluride. It’s only about 200 miles, which I can do standing on my head. (If anyone else is travelling this way get in touch — we can share car rental costs.) Two, producer-writer Glenn Zoller, who has passed along observations during previous Telluride festivals, has generously offered a free flop in a bunk bed in his dad’s Telluride home so that covers lodging. So it’s not going to hurt that badly.

The special LAX-to-Montrose shuttle is about $1000 per person, and the Denver-to-Grand Junction shuttle or the Denver-to-Montrose shuttle are, I gather, somewhat pricey, so the Albuquerque thing feels right. Driving from Montrose to Telluride takes two hours, and the trek from Grand Junction to Telluride is roughly four hours so the same driving time from Albuquerque to Telluride doesn’t sound too bad.

Nobody sane flies directly into Telluride airport, I’m told, because the runway is on a cliff or a plateau of some kind. A journalist pal says a pilot once told him he’d never land at that airport. The legend is that the danger factor is roughly similar to taking-off-and-landing conditions faced by Cary Grant and friends in Only Angels Have Wings.

Telluride screenings will also open up my Toronto schedule, etc. I’m guessing that the usual-usuals will screen in Telluride — The Descendants, Moneyball, The Ides of March, Terrence Davies‘ The Deep Blue Sea, A Dangerous Method, Albert Nobbs, Shame, Werner Herzog‘s Into The Abyss, etc. And after all this effort, it would be entirely welcome and appropriate if they show Martin Scorsese‘s 210-minute George Harrison: Living in the Material World.

As I understand it, today’s appalling Dow tumble of more than 600 points is primarily in response to Standard & Poors dropping U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+ along with the shaky European economy plus the bad unemployment figures. But the real cause, of course, was the volatile climate brought about by rightwing terrorism over the debt-ceiling and budget-deficit standoff. Sen. Mitchell and Speaker Boehner are partly to blame for this, but Cantor, Walsh, Bachmann and the other 60-odd right-wing loonies in the House bear particular responsibility. Damn them to hell.

Here‘s N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman on the laughable non-credibility of Standard & Poors.

One of the best ideas to come out of yesterday’s Oscar Poker discussion (i.e., # 43) was a suggestion by Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone that SAG members could organize an open debate about the performance-capture issue triggered by the righteous talk about Andy Serkis deserving a nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Face the issue and battle it out, guys, and let journalists take notes. It’s the future, after all. More and more exciting performance-capture tour de forces are going to happen in years to come. Can’t live with your heads in the sand.

Here’s a non-iTunes, stand-alone link.

A pair of conservative bloggers are freaking over a just-out Newsweek cover photo of Rep. Michelle Bachmann, claiming in effect that Tina Brown‘s publication is doing to the radical-right Congressperson what Life magazine did to Charles Manson in 1969. Except Bachmann does project what Chris Matthews once described as a “moronic stare” — ditzoid, glassy-eyed. It’s not Photoshop. That’s how she looks.

An appalled Noel Sheppard of newsbusters.org wrote, “Exactly what were the editors thinking putting this kind of a picture of a sitting Congresswoman and presidential candidate on their cover?”

An unidentified editor at Freedom’s Lighthouse has asked, “Can anyone really say with a straight face that the mainstream media is not totally biased against conservatives?”

I’m presuming that other conversatives will chime in on this issue today. I’d like a friend-of-Bachmann to make a case that her eyes don’t have that dopey-alien-from Trafalmadore expression all on their own, without Tina Brown’s help. Because they clearly do.

Here’s an excellent, keenly observant profile (dated 8.15) of Bachmann by The New Yorker‘s Ryan Lizza.

Two months after it became available through Walmart online and Amazon.com, DVD Beaver has finally posted a review of MGM’s The Big Country Bluray, which I reviewed on 6.11. Gary W. Tooze writes that he “had a dickens of a time trying to get it.” Is there some reason why he couldn’t order it online like I did? What he means, I suspect, is that he had a dickens of a time getting his mitts on a freebie.