The beautiful amber-pinkish red sunset clouds and the obvious bond between Joey the horse and Albert (Jeremy Irvine) tell us that Steven Spielberg‘s War Horse (Touchstone, 12.28) is going to lay it on thick. This is basically going to be an emotional family-friendly film about caring and love and the romance of beautiful photography (by Janusz Kaminski, of course) and the always affecting strains of John Williams‘ score.

If you’re the sort of moviegoer who lives for stark, this-is-life, take-it-or-leave-it, matter-of-fact realism, chances are you’re going to feel a bit starved by War Horse in this respect. Maybe.

Which is fine in and of itself. There’s nothing wrong with making this kind of movie with this kind of material if it’s handled well. But a presumably studio-written synopsis that I found this morning on Coming Soon has scared me half to death.

“Set against a sweeping canvas of rural England and Europe during the First World War, War Horse begins with the remarkable friendship between a horse named Joey and a young man called Albert, who tames and trains him,” it reads. “When they are forcefully parted, the film follows the extraordinary journey of the horse as he moves through the war, changing and inspiring the lives of all those he meets — British cavalry, German soldiers, and a French farmer and his granddaughter — before the story reaches its emotional climax in the heart of No Man’s Land.”

“Changing and inspiring the lives of all those he meets”? Isn’t that what Lassie used to be do when she made her way across the Scottish and English countryside and running into farmers and children and constables and whatnot?

I’m always soothed whenever I meet a horse. I smile and feel good and want to pet him and tell him I like him a lot. That’s one thing. But does a horse inspire me and lead me to change my life? Animals warm our hearts but they don’t ‘inspire’ us. In fact, they explain us. The way you respond to an animal always reveals an aspect of who and what you are.

That is why the way the exploitive way the donkey was treated in Robert Bresson‘s Au Hasard Balthazar revealed the selfish and cruel side of human nature. The donkey was a kind of saint, a Christ figure, and he was constantly shat upon and used as a beast of burden by almost every working-class figure he runs into (except for a couple of female characters). But along comes War Horse delivering…what, the opposite message? That people are basically kind and decent and compassionate and that Joey brings this out in them?

I’m sorry, but that passage about “changing and inspiring” makes War Horse sound like sentimental slop.

Perhaps N.Y. Times critic Ben Brantley‘s description of the play provides a hint or two.

“I once attended a midnight show of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, where the audience was heartily enjoying the carnage wrought by a man-eating shark until a pooch was seen swimming in the ocean, and someone seated near me, expressing the feelings of multitudes, called out, ‘Oh, God, not the dog!’

“War Horse taps that same keg of emotion. It’s ‘Oh, God, not the horse,’ elicited to bring home the savagery of war.

“The play also speaks, cannily and brazenly, to that inner part of adults that cherishes childhood memories of a pet as one’s first — and possibly greatest — love. This is a show for people who revisit films like National Velvet and Old Yeller when they need a good cry.

“In truth, the script of War Horse makes that of National Velvet (I mean, the heavenly 1944 movie, starring the 12-year-old Elizabeth Taylor) seem like a marvel of delicacy.”

A couple of months ago In Contention‘s Guy Lodge passed along a kind of consensus view among some London critic friends that Rachel Weisz‘s performance in Terrence Davies‘ The Deep Blue Sea “is a career-best, according to trusted sources who have seen it.”

Music Box Films acquired the film for US distribution earlier this month at the Toronto Film Festival, and is presumably intending to put it in theatres before 12.31.11 so that Weisz will qualify for awards action.

Based on the play by Terence Rattigan, Sea is a 1950s-era tale about an affair between a married socialite (Weisz) and an ex-RAF pilot (Tom Hiddleston). Eventually and quite naturally Weisz’s older husband (Simon Russell Beale), a judge, finds out and the shit hits the fan.

The New York premiere for 50/50 happened tonight at the Ziegfeld, and the after-party uncorked at the Four Seasons. Great party, superb food, nice hosts…but I was in a funny place in my head for some reason and left after an hour. HE mood pockets just “happen” sometimes, and there’s no stopping them when they decide to creep in and take over. For those who might’ve missed it, here’s my 50/50 review, posted on 9.11.

50/50 stars Seth Rogen, Joseph Gordon Levitt at tonight’s post-premiere party at the Four Seasons on East 52nd. Rogen’s movies don’t convey the fact that he’s fairly tall — tall and broad-sbouldered and no beanpole. If I was in a street fight, I could do worse than to have Rogen on my side.

50/50 costar Anna Kendrick, Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg.

Matt Zoller Seitz‘s Press Play is running a week’s worth of essays about Roman Polanski, concluding and coinciding with Friday’s big-deal premiere of Carnage at the New York Film Festival.

The first essay, narrated by Simon Abrams and edited by Serena Bramble, is called “Polanski’s God” — a riff of the director’s bleak world view and apparent attitude toward religion and God.

Tuesday will see a piece by Steven Santos on the architecture and claustrophobia in Polanski’s films. On Wednesday an appreciation of Cul-de-Sac by L.A. filmmaker Jose Gallegos will appear. On Thursday Jim Emerson will contemplate the visual rules and regulations in Chinatown. Friday’s finale will be another collaboration between Seitz and Kim Morgan, focusing on Repulsion.

I was told earlier today why Oliver Stone and Showtime decided to cancel screenings of the first three episodes of Stone’s Untold History of the United States at the 2011 New York Film Festival.

It wasn’t because of “scheduling conflicts,” as the announcement read. It’s because Stone, immersed in the cutting of Savages, an action drama about drug dealing, is way behind on preparing all ten episodes of the series. I’m told it may not air for quite a while, perhaps as late as September 2012 (or even later). So Stone and Showtime figured there was no promotional benefit in showing the first three episodes now if the series won’t air for another year or so.

The three episodes in question are complete and were shown to NY Film Festival bigwigs prior to booking the slot and making the initial announcement.

Take the Salvador Dali-esque, psychedelic suggestion in this one-sheet for Bruce Robinson‘s The Rum Diary (Film District, 10.28) with a grain of salt. As noted earlier, the idea of the film reflecting “some crazed hallucination” is a stretch. It’s based on Hunter S. Thompson’s book, which was begun in Puerto Rico in 1959. Nobody has weird visions on rum.

There’s no question that the wrong music can diminish or ruin a widely admired film. Drive especially, given the popularity of its soundtrack. But you can ruin any good film with cruddy music. Imagine Robert Wise‘s The Day The Earth Stood Still with a Plan Nine From Outer Space-level score. You could hypothesize in this vein forever.

“Has anybody been watching the debates lately? You’ve got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change. It’s true. You’ve got audiences cheering at the prospect of somebody dying because they don’t have healthcare. And booing a service member in Iraq because they’re gay. That’s not reflective of who we are.” — President Barack Obama speaking last night at a Bay Area fundraiser.

I missed Abe Sylvia‘s Dirty Girl (Weinstein Co., 10.7) at the 2010 Toronto Film Festival. I have a chance to see it this evening, but Katey Rich’s year-old Cinema Blend review has given me pause. A promiscuous bad girl (Juno Temple) and an overweight gay classmate (Jeremy Dozier) flee the horrors of Oklahoma for potential deliverance in California. For what it’s worth the violet-pink one-sheet works.

Warner Home Video’s Ben-Hur Bluray streets tomorrow. It’s been selling in at least a couple of Manhattan DVD stores over the past week or so. If I was home in West Hollywood I’d have a screener by now and a review posted like everyone else. But I’m going to wait five days to see it on a big, panoramic screen at Saturday morning’s New York Film Festival showing at Alice Tully Hall. I’ll probably never see it projected like this again.

Five days ago Bluray.com’s Jeffrey Kauffman described the Ben-Hur Bluray as “astonishing — really breathtaking, and I mean that literally. Is there any other studio that has so lovingly gone back to its iconic catalog (albeit one that officially “belongs” to M-G-M) as Warner has? Once again the studio has returned to the original negative to source new high-rez scans, along with a frame-by-frame restoration, to present this film in high definition, and to say the results are spectacular is something of an understatement.

“What a difference a careful transfer, including absolutely accurate telecine color timing, can make for a release. The film is also stunningly damage-free, with nary a scratch, speck or other distraction in view.

“This well over three hour film has been wisely spread across two BD-50’s, so kiss any latent fears of compression artifacts goodbye, especially since the bulk of the supplements are included on a third Blu-ray disc. Everything from the copious Roman foliage to the ornate grillwork in the Hur compound resolves perfectly, with precision and absolute accuracy. Colors are incredibly well saturated and those gorgeous Technicolor reds and purples are all that they should be.”