It hit me several weeks ago that Seth Rogen would be a good guy to have on my side in a street fight. He’s fairly tall and broad-shouldered and on the beefy side, and…well, I’m just flying on a whim but something tells me he wouldn’t fool around. He’d probably kick and gouge and get guys into a hammerlock and bite off a piece of their ear. So it’s good news that Rogen has been hired to host the 2012 Film Independent Spirit Awards.

No, I don’t see a connection either. None whatsoever. I’m kicking this around as we speak. Wait…I’ve got it. A good comedian is fearless — confident and unafraid to tackle any topic or share any observation — and that fearlessness comes from the same gasoline that fuels and propels a good kick-boxer or wrestler or eye-poker.

The 27th annual awards ceremony will be held as usual in a monster-sized super-tent on the beach…well, on a beach-adjacent parking lot in Santa Monica on Saturday, 2.25 — 25 or 26 hours before the Oscars. Let’s hope that the chill blustery winds that all but ruined last February’s Spirit Awards won’t re-occur.

The title comes from a line spoken by James Caan in Michael Mann‘s Thief: “I am the last guy in the world that you wanna fuck with.”

On the afternoon of Friday, 12.2 — hours after seeing The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo at Sony — I posted a Best Actress evaluation piece that began with my enthusiastic response to Rooney Mara‘s performance as Lisbeth Salander. She was so fierce and penetrating, I figured, that she had to be a late-inning Best Actress contender. In my own book that’s still true, but things have changed over the last 11 days, and now…who knows?

Mara Rooney in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

The tight embargo enforcement and the general feeling that Sony doesn’t see Dragon Tattoo as an award-calibre film has created a feeling that the air is seeping out of the Tattoo tires, awards-wise, including Mara’s own.

It just goes to show how quickly things change in this racket. The wind shifts direction, the temperature cools down, the current loses strength. Anyway, here’s how I saw it way back when:

“I don’t think I’m breaking the embargo to say that Rooney Mara is fierce and touching and diamond-hard in David Fincher‘s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Yes, her Lisbeth Salander character is familiar due to Noomi Rapace having played her three times in the three original Girl flicks but Mara gives a richer, fuller performance, I feel. Her manner is curt and chilly but her eyes are swimming with feeling. She’s a heartbreaker, and she’s tough and resourceful — the rock upon which the film rests.

“In a phrase, I think it’s highly likely that Mara will land a Best Actress nomination”…Update: Nope — not likely at all. A slender chance, at best.

“By my sights, the locks are Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady), Michelle Williams (My Week With Marilyn) and Viola Davis (The Help). The top actresses fighting it out for the other two slots are Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs), Charlize Theron (Young Adult) and Tilda Swinton (We Need To Talk About Kevin). And possibly Mara, which would make four.

“Close is seen as a weak sister in some circles because her performance is so restrained and still and minmal. On the other hand her presumed Best Actress nomination has long been seen as a career tribute (i.e., the last 30 years) plus Close has been glad-handing a lot of people at a lot of events on both coasts. Theron is seen as vulnerable because her Young Adult character, Mavis Gary, is acutely dislikable; others feel that she gives an exceptionally ballsy and blazing performance because of the dislikable-ness. Tilda Swinton‘s We Need To Talk About Kevin performance is a little odd and “who knows?” She plays a writer who gives birth to an evil demon who needs to be thrown off a pier in a burlap bag filled with rocks at an early age. I don’t see it.

“And yet many feel that Theron and Swinton give livelier, more vivid and graspable performances than Close does, despite Close having the sweep of history and present-day politics behind her.

“Close has been on thin ice since the start of the week,” says In Contention‘s Kris Tapley. “I think it’s a strong performance so I wouldn’t treat it as if it ‘has to go.’ And the category itself is fraught with great performances in mediocre films (though I think Young Adult is a great film, and the exception). So the film itself doesn’t really hold her down. The problem — as far as standing out this time of year is concerned — is that Close’s is an internalized portrayal. And you have to have a ‘show them’ component to register for a large group of people like the Academy.

“That qualification out of the way, yes, Close is in a precarious spot. The thing Theron could have against her, as you intimate, is how unlikable her character is. Viola Davis, Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams seem assured. And it’s not just Mara looking for room. Indeed, Tilda Swinton hasn’t gone away. But I don’t see anyone outside of those seven cracking in.”

“Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg disagrees. He thinks that Martha Marcy May Marlene‘s Elizabeth Olsen and Like Crazy‘s Felicity Jones have contention heat. That’s not very likely, I feel. Feinberg knows that Academy voters tend to let one ingenue in among a typical Best Actress assortment, and that they’re not likely to let in three.”

Right now I think it’s Streep, Davis, Williams, Theron and either Swinton or Mara…but more likely Swinton. Close is weakening, I feel.

There are two significant omissions among the Broadcast Film Critics Association‘s nominees, which were announced this morning. One, Albert Nobbs‘ Glenn Close wasn’t nominated for Best Actress despite there being six slots. And two, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy‘s Gary Oldman was given the go-by for Best Actor. BFCA picks have generally tended to reflect default preferences among the schmoozy guild and Academy set, so this may (I say “may”) be cause for concern among the Close and Oldman camps.

All along the unspoken Close-for-Best-Actress argument has been “even if you’re not knocked out by her Albert Nobbs performance, you can’t deny that her acting over the last 30 years warrants a career-tribute salute.” But during yesterday’s Oscar Poker podcast (which hasn’t yet posted) I asked whether that rationale or equation might be wearing thin against competitors whose performances are knocking people out, in and of themselves. The SAG nominations later this week will either follow the BFCA glide path or countermand it.

I don’t get the Oldman blow-off. There’s serious admiration and respect out there for his George Smiley performance, and he sure as hell delivers in a more subtle and layered fashion way than the nominated Jean Dujardin does in The Artist . The BFCA ballot, which I filled out last weekend, only asks for three nominees in each category, so obviously most people…okay, I submitted Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Michael Fassbender in those slots. I know, I know: I fucked up. I should have ranked Oldman after Pitt and Clooney — I loved Fasssbender’s Jane Eyre performance, but his Shame guy is too glacial and impassive — but I let my Zelig impulse carry me away. Not a proud moment.

The Artist and Hugo garnered 11 nominations each. People voting to support the latest by dear, beloved Martin Scorsese — keeper of the cineaste flame — is understandable despite 75% of Hugo being a mostly tedious sit. But support for The Artist is pure Zelig thinking — a vote for pleasantness and taking the easy schmoozy way out and sparkling, silver-toned good vibes. It’s cool that Drive landed eight nominations, and a bit curious that The Help got eight also.

The BFCA also denied The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo‘s Rooney Mara a deserved Best Actress nomination, and gave the film itself only two minor nominations — Best Score and Best Editing. My guess is that the BFCA was responding to Sony’s strict review embargo on some level. They were saying, “We get it — you guys don’t see this film as an awards contender and that’s fine.” But they were wrong, I feel, to throw out Mara with the bathwater.

Kris Tapley and I both heard from guys who caught an early peek at Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and proclaimed that Max Von Sydow was a slamdunk lock for Best Supporting Actor. (Here‘s my post.) Except Von Sydow didn’t even get nominated by the BFCA. Those two guys have some splainin’ to do.

That said, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close did manage nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Young Actor/Actress.

Is there anyone over the age of three and under 75 who doesn’t know that David Fincher‘s The Girl With Dragon Tattoo (Sony, 12.21) is a remake of Niels Arden Oplev‘s 2009 Swedish-language film of the same title, and that both are based on the late Stieg Larsson‘s 2008 novel? Is it therefore likely that anyone will be surprised to read that Fincher’s film looks, plays and feels exactly like a remake, albeit one that’s costlier, punchier, gloomier and more vigorous?

Boiled down to basics, that’s what this film is — a highly efficient, A-grade, gripping-as-far-as-it-goes deja vu experience. It’s a bit darker and very well acted all around (especially in terms of one crucial performance), and more atmospherically noirish in an almost luxurious, Hollywood-comes-to-Sweden sort of way. But these are attributes of efficiency rather than vision or art. I mean, the territory had already been well mapped by the book and the ’09 film. What could Fincher be expected to do except give it a high-style topspin?

There’s nothing wrong with re-doing a recently made, highly successful foreign language film (which grossed over $100 million), but let’s call a spade a spade: this is primarily a cash-grab enterprise that didn’t really need to happen except for a desire on the part of the creative principals (Fincher, producer Scott Rudin, Sony Pictures) to make piles of money. Yes, that’s why 97% of all films are made, but you go to a Fincher film expecting that extra “something”, however you want to define that word, and Tattoo, for all its stimulations and satisfactions, doesn’t have that. Not as far as I could detect, at least.

Tattoo has a wonderfully haunting main-title sequence and a great score by Trent Reznor, okay, but it’s certainly no landmark Fincher film in the vein of The Social Network, Se7en, Fight Club or Zodiac. As far as I can tell it was an exercise, a job, something cool to do. And that’s okay. A home-run hitter will sometime hit a double or a sacrifice fly, and there’s no shame whatsoever in that. And Tattoo, Lord knows, is certainly a grabbier, more straight-shooting, less pretentious deal than The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Is Tattoo well-made and reasonably absorbing in terms of suspense, thrills, performances and high-style brushstrokes? Yeah, it is. Is it a whole lot better than the Swedish original? You could make that argument and I wouldn’t put up a fight. But as a Fincher film it very nearly belongs in the company of The Game, Panic Room and even Alien 3.

Why did I use the word “nearly”? Because The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo delivers a major standout element in Rooney Mara‘s performance as Lisbeth Salander.

This is a culturally important role, for sure — a tough-but-wounded, leather-clad Gothy biker with a laptop, a brilliant analytical mind and a brusque, back-off attitude. Salander is easily the leading fictional female empowerment figure of the 21st Century, certainly to the millions of women who’ve read Larsson’s Tattoo books. And Mara, I feel, gives Salander a sadder and more vulnerable aura and a more emotionally readable quality than what Noomi Rapace delivered in the Swedish trilogy.

You might compare the two films down the road and say, “Nope, don’t see it…six of one, half-dozen of the other” but I know what I felt from Mara’s eyes, and there’s a lot going on inside her, I swear. Tremors and feints and glances and looks that say “stay away, I don’t want you near….wait, maybe I do.”

There’s enough in this performance, I feel, for Mara to be counted among the year’s Best Actress nominees. But I don’t know if that’s going to travel given the apparent decision on Fincher, Rudin and Sony’s part to not offer Dragon Tattoo as an award-calibre December release and to just put it out there as “a people’s movie.” They’re probably right as far as the film goes — it’s not a original-enough thing to really crank up the critics — but I’m afraid that Rooney’s performance might get thrown out with the bathwater. And that wouldn’t be right or fair. She’s got an exceptional inside-rumble going on.

I’ve just came back from Brad Bird and Tom Cruise”s Mission: Impossible 4 — Ghost Protocol and it’s after midnight and I don’t have much energy left, I’m afraid, so I’ll have to run a review about how Dragon Tattoo plays on a scene-by-scene, jolt-by-jolt basis in a day or two. Here’s Justin Chang‘s Variety review, which is somewhat more enthusiastic than mine.

Universal Citywalk is truly the Speed Racer of hell malls. I used to bring the kids here when young, but there really would have to be something wrong with you to bring a date here. And of course, none of the restaurants offer wifi. The local Starbucks is closed for renovations, but none of the waiters who recommended that I go there for wifi even knew that.

But it’s cold and rainy outside and I need the warmth so I’m sitting in a wifi-free Chinese joint, morose and resentful.

Why am I subjecting myself? Paramount’s M:I4 all-media IMAX screening.

About three hours ago I had a nice easy chat with Albert Brooks, whose sardonic and malevolent performance as a former exploitation film producer-turned-“bad guy” resulted yesterday in three Best Supporting Actor awards from the Boston Film Critics Society, the New York Film Critics Online and the San Francisco Critics Circle. Add these to his New York Film Critics Circle win in the same category two weeks ago, and he’s surely a lock for an Academy Award nomination. Right now it’s Brooks vs. Christopher Plummer, I’d say.

Albert Brooks (photo not taken by yours truly)

Seriously — we had a really good discussion about this and that and whatever else. It goes on for about 35 minutes and is highly recommended.

Last June I wrote that Brooks “is deliciously direct in Drive — cynical, snarly, smart-mouthed. And yet good-humored at times. His Bernie Rose, a former schlock movie producer, is one of those tasty-ironic characters, mostly ‘written’, of course, but also a series of riffs and rim-shots that Brooks seems to have co-written or half-improvised as he went along.

“Bernie doesn’t like mincing words and futzing around with low-lifes but he does enjoy wordplay on a certain level and reflecting on the past, etc. He’s crafty and cunning and straight…and so corrupted he’s lost sight of whatever he might have been in the ’80s. I wish the script could have given Brooks/Bernie just a bit more humor and meditation (and less in the way of artery-slicing), but what’s there is fine, quite fine.”

The Drive guys in this testimonial video are very taken with the menacing quality of Brooks’ performance, but I think that people are voting for him because he’s simply delicious in the film, and because people have liked and admired him since the mid ’70s and all that. It’s fun to watch him play dark and bad, but he’s too embedded in our consciousness as a brilliant comic auteur to be fully accepted as the guy he’s inhabiting in Drive. Which isn’t to take anything away from the performance — it’s just that Brooks-the-comic-legend is bigger. A vote for Brooks is a vote for Brooks, and that’s a good thing.

If anyone has PDFs of the following Blacklist scripts lying around, please send this way. I can read one or two on my Thursday, 12.15 flight to NYC. (Thanks to L.A. Times reporter Nicole Sperling for listings and descriptions.)

Evan Susser and Van Robichaux‘s “Chewie” (WME) — “A satirical, behind-the-scenes look at the making of Stars Wars through the eyes of Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca.”

Matthew Aldrich‘s “Father Daughter Time: A Tale of Armed Robbery and Eskimo Kisses” (CAA) — “A man goes on a three-state crime spree with an accomplice, his 11-year-old daughter.”

Mike Jones‘ “In the Event of a Moon Disaster” (CAA) — “An alternate telling of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon that examines what might have happened if the astronauts had crash-landed there.”

Michael Mitnick‘s “The Current War” (WME) — “Based on the true story of the race between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse to develop a practical system of electricity and sell their respective inventions to the country and the world.”

Keith Bunin‘s “Ezekiel Moss” (CAA) — “A mysterious stranger who possibly has the power to channel the souls of the dead changes the lives of everyone in a small Nebraska town, especially a young widow and her 11-year-old son.”

The funniest bit in this relatively new Battleship trailer is a moving shot of the sea followed by a title card that says “the ocean.” And the funniest line is spoken by Liam “paycheck” Neeson: “I want to have this thing thoroughly investigated.” Hasbro usually means submental.

During a Manhattan q & a last Tuesday night, Meryl Streep explained that The Iron Lady is “three days in the life of a little old lady who just happens to [have been] the longest-serving prime minister in the 20th century and the only female in the western world to rule a nuclear country. I mean, pretty interesting stuff, to look at a life in its ebbing and in its diminishment…our movie is about her history through her eyes.

“We took things from three days of a life — things that would be called up from a fire on a television, an explosion. What memory would that trigger? A son calling and saying he’s not gonna make it again up to see her. What memories would that trigger about lost sons? It’s imagining Margaret Thatcher as a human being, which is very, very hard for some people.”

The interview, which included Iron Lady director Phyllida Lloyd, was moderated by Hollywood Reporter award-season columnist Scott Feinberg. It happened almost a week ago but it took several days for the Weinstein guys to transfer it to YouTube. It happened at the DGA theatre on 57th Street, and it ran for about 40 minutes,

“I would like to think that everybody that got on a subway and saw some old lady sitting across from them…that they would imagine that a whole huge life lay behind all those wrinkles and that seemingly nondescript forgettable face,” Streep said at one point.

“I mean, there is almost nothing less interesting in our consumerist society than an old lady. Dismissed. We don’t make movies for her, we don’t give a damn, we can’t sell her anything, she doesn’t buy anything. But just the idea that everything — the whole panoply of human experience: births, deaths, struggles, joy — everything’s in there. And just to imagine that. That’s what I would hope.”

Will Smith wants to entertain. He wants to be loved, and to be rich. And right now and for the foreseeable future, I’m done with him. His being in a film is persuasion enough that I probably won’t like it, or that I’ll feel bored or distracted. Plus the moustache doesn’t work — too dark, too punctuated.

The awards chosen this afternoon by the 2011 San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards are more independent-minded than those handed out by the Boston Film Critics Society and the New York Film Critics Online a few hours ago. The top SFFCC choices: Best Picture, The Tree of Life; Best Director, Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life; Best Original Screenplay, J.C. Chandor, Margin Call; Best Adapted Screenplay, Bridget O’Connor & Peter Straughan, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

Best Actor, Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; Best Actress, Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin; Best Supporting Actor, Albert Brooks, Drive; Best Supporting Actress, Vanessa Redgrave, Coriolanus; Best Animated Feature; Rango; Best Foreign Language Film, Certified Copy; Best Documentary, Tabloid; Best Cinematography, Emmanuel Lubezki, The Tree of Life; Special Citation for underappreciated independent cinema: The Mill and The Cross.

I can’t transcribe any more. My fingers are numb. Here’s In Contention‘s report about the Houston Film Critic awards and the Detroit Film Critic nominations.

It’s been about 13 years since the last newly mastered DVD of John Frankenheimer‘s The Train was commercially released. It was re-issued two years ago but wasn’t even re-scanned for 16 x 9. MGM needs to issue a Bluray, and within the same 1.66 to 1 aspect ratio that it had on the old early ’90s laser disc and DVD.

This is one of the most brilliantly choreographed, all-natural, CG-free adventure thrillers ever made — an ace-level thing top to bottom, loaded with grease and grit and verisimilitude. And several Scorsese-level tracking shots. Shot in ’64, it was the last studio-funded outdoor thriller filmed in black-and-white. The DVD looks okay…pretty good, really — but a larger, needle-sharp Bluray would be breathtaking. Please.