Which of the following unpronouncable, unspellable names is the title of an established Massachusetts-based film society that hands out annual awards?: (a) Klastchbuddlekin, (b) Colbustisch, (c) Chlotrudis, (d) Specialsphincter and/or (e) Axolotl?

Jay Roach will direct a dramatic adaptation of Game Change, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin‘s best-seller about the ’08 election, for HBO. Which means he’ll be casting actors to portray Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, John McCain, Sarah Palin, John Edwards, Elizabeth Edwards and Reille Hunter. Question: If you were Roach would you reach out to Tina Fey to play Palin in a realistic, non-comedic, non-caricature vein, or would you start fresh with someone else?

“What’s ‘defining’ about The Social Network is the way it shows a generation losing touch with its humanity,” says Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers. “The satire in Aaron Sorkin‘s script isn’t aimed at what you call the ‘cool kids,’ the creative, non-narcissistic users of the internet who don’t use ‘friend’ as a verb. They are in the minority.

“Who’s the majority? Go to any multiplex to see a movie — I just came back from Sundance — and you’ll see a lightshow of iPhones and Blackberrys at every performance. Not before or after the movie, but during. The guy next to me (from your generation) was checking his e-mail and updating his Facebook status. No apology. No shame. He just shot me a look. Like I wasn’t there. Like the audience wasn’t there. Like it was just him and a glowing screen.”

At the end of Joe Morgenstern‘s Wall Street Journal column today comes this: “With The King’s Speech gaining the Oscar traction it deserves — the latest boost being an expression of approval from Queen Elizabeth — I can’t resist going public with a story that I’ve relished telling to friends, and to the people who made the movie.

“Several weeks before it opened, I had a conversation with Rupert Murdoch, who popped a question familiar to movie critics: What should he see?

“I suggested The King’s Speech, and, not wanting to spoil it with too many details, gave a shorthand description: Colin Firth as King George VI, who has a terrible stutter, and Geoffrey Rush as a raffish Australian speech therapist.

“‘Yes, he replied, Lionel Logue.

“‘So you know the story.’

“Not the story of the movie, he said. ‘Lionel Logue saved my father’s life.’

“When I responded with speechlessness, he explained that his father, as a young man, wanted passionately to be a newspaper reporter, but couldn’t interview people because he stuttered. Then he met Lionel Logue, who cured him in less than a year.”

In their self-financed FYC Oscar ads, The Alamo‘s Chill Wills and The Color Purple‘s Margaret Avery “traded recklessly and shamelessly on their nominated roles,” writes Baltimore Sun critic Michael Sragow. “Melissa Leo did nothing of the sort. Instead, she brought home the message that unless a mature working actress like herself boasts a high degree of chic or a record of box-office clout, you rarely see her in fashion ads or on slick paper. I don’t think Leo hurt her chances with anyone who saw the ads. She may even have helped her chances if a few people got the point.”

John Landis‘s Schlock (’73) is one of the funniest low-budget comedies I’ve ever seen, and I’ve only seen it once. Anchor Bay released it on DVD ten years ago. The 21 year-old Landis directed, wrote, produced and starred in the title role. Rick Baker did the makeup. It’s actually more than a genre spoof. It’s a combination of stoner humor and social satire in the vein of the old Ernie Kovacs show. The sequence below is a riff on an old Laurel & Hardy routine.

Here’s another bit when a kid on a baseball field, and another with a blind girl — both of them riffs on a famous scene in James Whale‘s Frankenstein (’31). I remember a mildly hilarious piano-playing sequence shot in The Old Place, a storied restaurant in the hills of Agoura, near Malibu.

All over Manhattan and across the other four boroughs, tens of thousands of people get happy, mildly buzzed or half-bombed every night. Tens of thousands. And yet people are still getting popped at alarming rates for getting mildly and harmlessly baked. I have no dog in this fight at all (I haven’t turned on since the ’70s) but I find it astonishing that New York City cops, 45 years after pot consumption began to explode in the mid ’60s, are expending so much chickenshit energy to bust people for doing next to nothing.

“Because of a long-standing policy at Paramount, The Fighter‘s distributor, Melissa Leo has not been the subject of solo ‘for your consideration” ads highlighting her as an individual, presumably…because the studio doesn’t want to offend Amy Adams, who is nominated in the same category.” — from Scott Feinberg‘s 2.8 article called “In Defense Of My Friend Melissa Leo.” In other words, Paramount changed its mind.

I’ve made fun of the Poland curse, but I’m no exception when it comes to comedies. The general rule has always been that if I really like something that I consider to be funny (Election, Rushmore, Greenberg, Hot Tub Time Machine), it’s going to be some kind of commercial shortfall with Joe Popcorn. So it’s moderately comforting, at least, to see that Cedar Rapids, which I admire except for the third-act conclusion, has an 80% Rotten Tomatoes rating. It opens limited this weekend.

Mubarak was just a figurehead so don’t be too ecstatic. There’s an entire culture of corrupt weasels still running things and wetting their beaks, just like before.

The usual pattern when a smallish U.S. distributor picks up a critically-praised indie at Sundance or Berlin is to bury it for several months, and then release it early (and in a way that barely catches your attention) the following year in some kind of simultaneous cable-demand-and-theatrical break. Let’s hope that Strand Releasing does better by Paddy Considine‘s Tyrannosaur, which I saw and fell in love with when I saw it last month at Sundance.

Strand’s Jon Gerrans and Marcus Hu have just acquired the British-made drama in Berlin. Please guys…don’t bury it. Don’t make it seem so minor and marginal that nobody will care when it peeps out like a mouse in early ’12. Try and release it Harvey-style sometime this year. People like me will support this film with real passion if you do. But if you wait until next year the gas will be out of the tank.

My Sundance quote: “The most original adult love story I’ve seen in ages, and a drama that deals almost nothing but surprise cards — a tough story of discipline, redemption and wounded love. Cheers to director-writer Considine for making something genuine and extra-unique. He’s not just an actor who’s branched into directing with a special facility for coaxing good performances — he’s a world-class director who knows from shaping, cutting, timing, holding back and making it all come together. Powerful performances from Peter Mullan, Olivia Colman and Eddie Marsan are one reason that it curiously touches.”

I’ve been invited by the Weinstein Co. and Peggy Siegal to all the King’s Speech gatherings over the last two or three months, and each time I filed respectful and appreciative reports. But I heard zip about the NYC Geoffrey Rush gathering that happened earlier this week. This was due, I presume, to my having equated the announcement of The King’s Speech‘s 12 Oscar nominations with the arrival of Soviet tanks in Prague in August 1968. And yet I’ve always liked the film for what it is (i.e., in context), and the filmmakers and the Weinsteiners, etc.

I think you just have to smile and raise a glass and do the old noblesse oblige in these situations. We all know The King’s Speech has the Best Picture Oscar in the bag; ditto Colin Firth for Best Actor. Venting about this is just a form of emotional therapy, and will obviously have no bearing. No need to be unfriendly.