I’ll be driving out to the 405 Sunset overpass later today to take some shots of the utterly empty 405. Everyone has spoken about Carmageddon as a blight, a plague, a traffic nightmare, an imprisonment. Except totally deserted highways and roads are a profound visual delight, and the only way to capture them is to shoot at 5:30 am and even then, etc. Or organize the emptiness like Stanley Kramer did when he shot On The Beach.

Frame capture from the finale of On The Beach (’60).

Last night Real Time‘s Bill Maher explained how his various laments and complaints about Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann aren’t sexist in nature, as some in the rightwing blogosphere have charged.

A 7.14 L.A. Times “24 Frames” report about a USC Twitter box-office prediction lab contains the following excerpt: “Cowboys and Aliens, [a] superhero movie opening in about two weeks, is barely registering with audiences on Twitter, a fact that doesn’t bode well for its box office potential, according to Jonathan Taplin, communication professor at USC and director of the lab. ‘It’s almost imperceptible the amount of tweets on it, and that’s unusual,’ Taplin said.”

The size of the Cowboys & Aliens balloon is awfully small. It’s about the same size as the one for Crazy Stupid Love, and a tad smaller than the Larry Crowne balloon. Which I’m rather surprised at. I’d been presuming all along that the Joe Popcorn legions would pour into theatres to see this thing, the concept being novel and amusing plus Daniel Craig paired with Harrison Ford, etc. Maybe people are just slow on the uptake? They don’t wake up to a non-sequel until it’s a few days off?

Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino is predicting a $33 million opening and a $90 million cume.

I have to say that I’m not very impressed with the sequence below, in which Craig tries to save Olivia Wilde from the clutches of a dragonfly alien craft. There’s no apparent reason for the craft to fly at a low altitude above a sunken river bed. And there’s no way that Craig could leap off his galloping horse and hope to land on the wing of the craft, which is a good 15 to 20 feet away. It just seems cheesy.

An overheard observation: “You see Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford in a western and it’s a movie you want to see…then aliens come in.”

It’s been seven or eight years since I last watched Trainspotting (’96), so I’m thinking I’ll probably get the Bluray (out September 13th) for old time’s sake. Danny Boyle‘s direction put him at the top of the list, and then he blew it with A Life Less Ordinary (’97) and The Beach (’00) until finally bouncing back in ’02 with 28 Days Later. John Hodge‘s screenplay is one of the all-time finest.

Apart from the obvious ethical considerations, an underlying element in all the Rupert-bashing of the last few days is that the liberal media is revelling in an opportunity to lash Murdoch for creating and enabling the rabid-attack-dog, spread-the-rightwing-bullshit messaging that his news empire (including the especially odious and obnoxious Fox News and the New York Post) is known for, or to at least weaken or modify it some extent.

Whatever prompts Murdoch to modify his methods, in other words, may result in a roundabout fashion in a less arrogant and more temperate approach to news-reporting. This may be flawed or presumptuous thinking, but that’s part of the liberal media establishment mood right now.

The problematic 1950s theatrical technologies known as Smellovision and Aromarama are dead and gone and will never return. And subsequent attempts to bring odors into movie-watching are nothing to hold onto either. The scratch-and-sniff Odorama process used for John Waters‘ Polyester was lame. And a new version being used with Robert Rodriguez‘s Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, a kind of swipe-and-smell deal called AromaScope, is another cheap trick.

The Rodriguez film is in 3D so the added-aroma element creates what they’re calling a 4D experience.

I for one would love it if Smell-o-vision worked — if there was a super-effective, high-function theatrical technology that dispenses aromas to go along with whatever’s being shown on the screen, and then quickly vacuums that aroma back to make way for the next olfactory immersion.

It would be nothing short of ecstatic to watch Lawrence of Arabia this way. Imagine savoring convincing simulations of the aromas of the Nefud desert, of camel shit and tobacco smoke in the British officer’s club, of oranges and grapes in Damascus, and the muddy streets of Daraa.

It’ll never happen in a theatre, but what if some kind of home-based aroma dispenser could be hooked up to specially coded Blurays of new and classic films? It could add a whole new element of serious immersion. I would install this system in a heartbeat if it really worked.

Imaging smelling North by Northwest — the aroma of 57th Street in the late afternoon, the splattering of bourbon onto Cary Grant‘s gray suit, the scent of a warm plate of brook trout and a Gibson martini on the 20th Century Limited, the aroma of sex and Arpege perfume in Eva Marie Saint‘s sleeping compartment, and so on.

Imagine the wet-dog smell of Wookie hair in Star Wars, and the horrible gut stink coming from that dead Tauntaun that Han Solo opens up with his light saber in order to provide warmth to Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back (“I thought they smelled bad on the outside!”). Imagine the smell of armpit sweat and stale air and Manhattan rainstorm aroma while watching 12 Angry Men. Imagine the aromas that would accompany a smell-o-visioned Inception — the sea water, the Paris streets, the scent of nearby pine trees and damp snow covering that mountaintop fortress, etc.

There would be very few films that wouldn’t be enhanced with this technology, should someone invent a version that really and truly performs.

There’s a Japanese-produced technology that has introduced aromas into theatres and homes, but the home version, which reportedly costs about $750 or so, works through a machine that “has to be topped up with fragrant liquids which create the scents.” That sounds tedious.

I suffer a chalk-on-a-blackboard spasm every time I hear NPR reporter Michele Norris pronounce her first name as “MEE-shell.” The correct pronunciation is Mee-SHELL (with that delicate French inflection on the second syllable) or Mis-SHELL. I literally wince when I’m driving in the car and Norris comes on and says her name. She doesn’t just emphasize the “MEE” — she revels in it. I’ve been to France many times and I worship the language, and Norris’s mispronunciation, I feel, smacks of cultural arrogance.

I complained about this nearly three years ago, but I didn’t offer what seems like a logical analysis. MEE-shell plus the re-spelling of Antoine as “Antwone” (as in Denzel Washington‘s Antwone Fisher) suggests that this is an African-American cultural thing. They’re don’t want to roll with the French (in these two instances, at least) and have a need to colloquialize and make it their own.

Can you imagine the furor if some Anglo TV or radio journalist did the same? What if a TV anchor named Enrique Phillips (having had a Latino mother, let’s say) decided to pronounce his first name “Enricky”? Or if a TV journalist narrating a documentary about Emiliano Zapata pronounced the Mexican revolutionary’s first name as “Eh-MILLY-yano” instead of the correct “Aymeeyahno”? People would pounce and say “show some respect to the Spanish language,” etc. But Michele Norris gets to mangle her first name because she’s African-American and is therefore allowed to “street” her name down any way she chooses.

Go ahead and pounce on me for this, but I have the high ground here. However your name is pronounced in the culture that spawned it, say it that way. If your name is Marcello Mastroianni, you absolutely must pronounce it as “MarCHELLo MahstroyANNI”….period.

Update: Here’s an excerpt from a Skanner interview with Michelle Norris:

Kam Williams: “Attorney Bernadette Beekman says, ‘I always wondered about the pronunciation of her name. [‘Mee-shell’] Why the emphasis on the first syllable?”

Michele Norris: “I don’t exactly quite know why my father stepped on the first syllable like that, but I proudly honor him now by insisting that people pronounce it the way that he did.”

So her father, Belvin Norris, Jr., is the culprit. Michele was born in 1961. She was four when Paul McCartney‘s “Michele” came out in late ’65, so I’m guessing that’s where her father got the idea, thinking that if it was good enough for the Beatles, etc. Maybe. That or he just decided to create his own sound. If Belvin had been to Paris (which I doubt) he would’ve pronounced it differently, I imagine. Or perhaps not. I know that if my father had decided to address me as “Jeef” or “Jefferoon” when I was a kid, you can bet I would have blown that off and come up with my own pronunciation.

What am I expected to say or do about the phenomenal Deathly Hallows 2 revenues? I’m obliged to re-post them, but I’m unable to generate (or simulate) that “oooh! oooh!” excitement that I’m getting from certain reports. Were they written by people on pogo sticks undergoing some kind of rapture? Take it easy.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2 opens today domestically, but the int’l openings began two days ago. And the int’l tally is now $82.5 million from 43 countries ($37.6 million Thursday and $43.6 million Wednesday). Last night’s U.S. midnight showings generated $43.5 million at 3,800 locations, which is $13.5 million higher than previous midnight record holder of $30 million earned by Twilight: Eclipse.

Deathly Hallows 2 is a very well-done film and a satisfying finale, but the box-office mania of the last couple of days doesn’t synch with the actual levels of delivery and achievement. Death Hallows 2 is like a single exceptional leopard, and the box-office response is a herd of 1,000 elephants. I have absolute knowledge of what this film is and a fair-minded understanding of what the Harry Potter franchise finally amounts to, and there’s no justification for people of taste and character and worldly perspective to respond this way. Certainly not in the eyes of the Movie Godz.

We’re obviously witnessing a mass emotional response to the end of a franchise by two kinds of people for the most part — i.e, those who were infected by the Potter virus as children and who probably aren’t as deep or bright or educated as they could or should be, and X-factor types who don’t lack in these departments but were also infected as children and are simply unable for reasons unknown to keep themselves from pounding on theatre doors.

I should add that my sons Jett and Dylan were Potter fans when they were kids, tweeners and early teens, but they’re past it now and want nothing to do with the DH2 insanity. Good fellows.

If everyone was like me, there would be a lot of people watching Deathly Hallows 2 this weekend because it’s a good film, etc., but you wouldn’t see the madness.

A ripped, bare-chested, long-haired guy (Taylor Kitsch) in Conan-the-Barbarian garb on the planet Mars? This is supposed to be semi-imaginative, some are saying. I’m sorry but it seems to me like the same old “rugged individual on a heroic quest to save a civilization with a hot girl in love with him” crap. Desert landscapes, armies on horseback, blah blah. Obviously aimed at comic-book geeks, ComicCon-ers, saps.

Okay, I chuckled. It’s clever. And I respect the effort to put apes on the 405’s Mulholland Drive bridge. But I want more.

I’ve heard the monster sound effects in this Thing trailer dozens of times before. That shrieking, smashing, guttural, mixing-board wail that only comes out of movie monsters when they’re attacking the costars of a monster film. Some monster-movie director needs to come up with something different…anything. We can’t keep listening to these same noises.

The 35th anniversary of the release of Martin Scorsese‘s Taxi Driver happened on February 8, 2011 since it opened on 2.8.76. The 2011 Berlin Film Festival screened a 4K restored version days after the anniversary. The excellent Bluray came out on April 5, 2011. And a beautiful pristine print showed two and a half months ago at the TCM Classic Movie Festival.

So why am I attending a 35th anniversary screening of Taxi Driver at Sony’s Colorworks facility this evening? Because I believe that it might look just a little bit better when screened at this studio-funded, top-of-the-line facility — just a tiny bit. And so I can say to myself for the rest of my life, “I’ve seen Taxi Driver on a theatre-sized screen at a very high-quality post-production house, or probably the best place to see it anywhere, ever.” So that’s why. Plus I want to get out and I have nothing else to do tonight.