Before reading Todd McCarthy‘s 10.6 review of Brian Kellow‘s “Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark“, I’d never heard about the legendary New Yorker film critic having allegedly hastened the death of director Roberto Rossellini by inflicting stress on the poor man. During their mutual service on the 1977 Cannes Film Festival jury, McCarthy writes, Kael “argued so relentlessly with the aging and ailing Rossellini for two weeks that the uncharitable accused her of killing the revered director, who died the following week.”

New Yorker critic Pauline Kael during a 1982 interview, when she was 62 or 63.

On the other hand McCarthy recounts a passage in Kellow’s book in which Kael and director George Roy Hill, “both terribly debilitated by Parkinson’s disease, met by chance in a small-town Massachusetts restaurant. Their previous personal contact had been some 30 years earlier when the director, responding to her unkind and, in one respect, uninformed review of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, had begun with the salutation, ‘Listen, you miserable bitch.’ Ignoring this, ‘Pauline clutched his hand warmly and gave him the name of her massage therapist, promising him that the therapy would do him a world of good.'”

McCarthy also notes that Kael “was always surprised when ‘friends’ she went on to attack in print — Woody Allen, for example — took offense at her criticism, as she somehow imagined they would understand it wasn’t personal, that she had to be completely honest in her reviews.”

Hah! From the filmmakers’ point of view, a critic or columnist they personally know is their friend and supporter no matter what, a writer who will always be generous or at least cut them a break whenever possible, or they’re some kind of enemy or betrayer or backbiter if they write something even moderately critical, especially if it strikes the filmmaker as dismissive.

The 1977 Cannes Film Festival jury (i.e., Kael is the shortest, fourth from right)

In 1840s Baltimore Edgar Allen Poe (John Cusack) joins forces with a stalwart detective (Luke Evans) to catch a serial killer who’s apparently been inspired by Poe’s writings, and whose next victim may be Emily (Alice Eve), whom Poe is in love with…Jesus! A movie can’t be funded until it’s ground down into genre mulch and made to closely resemble other films of its type (i.e. Sherlock Holmes, From Hell, Sleepy Hollow). 19th Century arterial splatter with lots of fog.

It’s called The Raven, and it comes out of 3.9.12. Here’s the Apple trailer.

The images in Pedro Almodovar‘s films are always luscious, sensuous, refined to perfection. Paying $200 to own 600 of them (including some never-before-published personal photos) to have and hold seems like a good deal to me. Taschen’s “The Pedro Almodovar Archives“, edited by Paul Duncan and Barbara Peiro, will hit stores on the same day that The Skin That I Live In (Sony Classics, 10.14) opens.

Yesterday media theorist and cultural pulse-taker Douglas Rushkoff posted a piece on CNN.com called “Think Occupy Wall St. is a phase? You don’t get it.” He was subsequently interviewed by an obviously skeptical, not-getting-it CNN anchorperson.

Rushkoff’s points are that (a) mainstream media types are having a hard time understanding the groundbreaking nature of the protests because they’re thinking in 20th Century street-protest terms while Occupy Wall Street is a “patient” internet phenomenon and (b) the discussions heard in Liberty Park about the 1% vs. 99% economic inequities have been, he feels, “more profoundly intelligent” than anything heard on network talk shows or in the halls of Congress addressing same.

My decision to fly back to Los Angeles on Saturday morning now seems like a major miscalculation. Not only will I miss seeing My Week With Marilyn at the Sunday press screening, but the just-announced “work in progress from a master filmmaker” that will screen on Monday night at 7pm. “The film is due to be released in theaters this year,” says the official announcement.

Steve Jobs flowers, candles and post-its in front of Prince Street Apple store — Thursday, 10.6, 8:15 pm.

Doing some work on an outdoor table at Savore, corner of Spring and Thompson — Thursday, 10.6, 9:05 pm.

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Not the “scariest, snarliest bulldog in the pen” but “the most powerful man in the world”? When Clint Eastwood‘s Harry Callahan called the .357 Magnum “the most powerful handgun in the world”, I believed him. But the Hoover description seems grandiose.

Early last July ESPN’s Bill Simmons confided that he’d seen Jason Reitman‘s Young Adult (Paramount, 12.9), and that Charlize Theron ‘s lead performance was a career landmark for her. Trailers always lie but this one suggests, at least, what Theron’s performance might be. Is anyone getting a sense that Simmons may have been right?

“Remember when we said earlier about Tom Cruise being Tom Cruise and how he needed Jerry Maguire [to do that], and how you watched for two hours…?,” Simmons said. “And this is Tom Cruise throwing 98 miles an hour? Charlize Theron has never had a movie like that. Monster shoudn’t be her defining movie…she gained 35 pounds and made herself ugly [for that], and she’s beautiful. She’s never had a really good movie that she was really good in in which she was also beautiful.

“And it made me reevaluate her career…that’s how good I thought she was in [Young Adult]. She knows that you know that she knows she’s beautiful. I’m glad she made this movie. People will feel differently about her after they see it.”

No superhero movie can work if it appeals only to ComicCon fanboy types. It has do that deep-theme, double-intelligent, heavy-lifting thing (like Captain America did) to attract skeptics and haters like myself. I don’t see this happening with Joss Whedon‘s The Avengers (Disney/Marvel, 5.4.12) because Whedon is an unregenerate, comic-book-worshipping, fanboy-servicing journeyman — not an art-visionary director like Cameron or Fincher or Del Toro, strictly a fantasy-realm clock puncher.

And after all the X-Men movies, who wants to slog it out with another superhero ensemble piece?

The problem with Douglas Rain‘s HAL voice being Siri’ed, of course, is that he no longer has that voice. His 2001: A Space Odyssey dialogue was recorded 44 or 45 years ago, when Rain (born in ’28) was in his late 30s. He’s now 83, and his voice surely has that vaguely fluttering, higher-pitched old man timbre. Apple needs to find a Rain-sounding guy to pinch-hit. (Thanks to HE reader Mark Frenden.)

If an opener has an under-60% Rotten Tomatoes rating, it’s probably a wash. If it’s under 30% it’s a must-to-avoid. But if it’s at 10% or lower, some kind of exceptional chord has clearly been struck. (Note: as the RT rating will change as the day wears on, I’ll re-adjust and rephrase.)

Movieline‘s latest Oscar Index is a typical example of how clubhouse, path-of-least-resistance spitballing manifests when you’re tasked with reconfiguring these charts week after week. It’s all about familiar emotional default. Take your standard Spielberg kowtowism, ignore the tendencies on view in his last war film (i.e., the one about Martians, particularly the happy finale) and throw in the recently-dropped War Horse trailer, the horse all but crying in close-up…obviously the Best Picture contender to beat. Simple, easy and who’s to dispute?

In my somewhat more real-worldish Oscar Balloon chart Moneyball and The Descendants share the top two positions followed by War Horse (because the saps will always champion shameless-emotional-appeal movies of this sort), Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Help, The Artist (its fate will depend on how well it does with the public) and Midnight in Paris. I’ve heard that the tone of The Iron Lady is “light”, but that needn’t be a problem in itself, if true. J. Edgar is in limbo for the time being, based on something I heard last weekend. I’m not sure that Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy will be judged as Best Picture-type contender — it’s more of a Gary Oldman-for-Best Actor show.