Any film starring Matthew McConaughey is wearing a huge sign around its neck saying “watch it, caveat emptor, proceed at your own risk,” etc. That doesn’t mean The Lincoln Lawyer (Lionsgate, 3.18.11) is a problem, but how can you not feel wary? Marisa Tomei, John Leguizamo costarring. The director is Brad Furman, whose only previous feature is The Take (’07), which no one saw.

I’ve finally read John H. Richardson‘s Esquire interview with The Fighter costar Christian Bale, and it’s a real q & a wrestling match. Bale and Richardson argue, defy and challenge each other, shove and laugh and then argue some more. Bale hates the movie promotion-interview game, longs for a kind of invisibility, tries to switch roles and interview Richardson, etc. It reminded me of one of those New Journalism celebrity interviews that Esquire ran of the ’60s and ’70s. It’s good stuff.

My favorite part comes when Bale confesses to not liking musicals or romantic comedies. Not even the good ones. He not only hadn’t seen Bringing Up Baby when he spoke to Richardson — he hadn’t heard of it.

Richardson: ” So what’s with all the darkness and the miserable characters and the guilt?”

Bale: “What do you mean ‘the darkness’? What do you mean? Give me examples.

Richardson: “The Machinist.”

Bale: “All right, that’s an extreme example.”

Richardson: “I’ll say.”

Bale: “I don’t like to kinda look at any patterns in my movies. But I guess Harsh Times is kind of harsh. The New World. And the Batman movies. The Prestige. Rescue Dawn. 3:10 to Yuma. I’m Not There. Velvet Goldmine. I’m sure I’ve got some non-dark-guilt-ridden pieces.”

Richardson: “Newsies.”

Bale: “Newsies.”

Richardson: “But you were this singing, dancing, happy kid. What happened to you?”

Bale: “I’m still singing and dancing and happy. I just don’t like musicals, that’s all.”

Richardson: “Or romantic comedies, I hear.”

Bale: “I just don’t find them very romantic or funny much of the time.”

Richardson: “What about Bringing Up Baby?”

Bale: “Is that a movie?”

Richardson: “It’s Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn.”

Bale: “I don’t know it.”

Richardson: “The Philadelphia Story?”

Bale: “Never seen it.”

Richardson: “Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”

Bale: “Never seen it.”

Richardson: “Get the fuck outta here.”

Bale: “You’re not talking to a cinemaphile.”

Richardson: “But I bet you’ve seen Aguirre, the Wrath of God.”

Bale: “Yes.”

Richardson: “Blue Velvet?”

Bale: “Yes.”

Richardson: “What else?”

Bale: “I saw The Wild Bunch recently. I remember being rocked by Naked when that came out — and I hate the pretentiousness of that, referencing a Mike Leigh movie, but it really did fascinate me for some reason.”

Richardson: “It’s a very grungy movie.

Bale: “And Chris Farley was just phenomenal. Beverly Hills Ninja will always remain one of my tops.”

Richardson: “Now you’re lying.”

Bale: “I have watched that movie. One time I sat down and watched it two nights in a row, and cried with laughter both times. The guy just was a phenomenon, and is missed dearly in my household.”

Here’s Bale’s best extended reply to a “who are you?” question:

“I have to admit that yeah, it’s absolutely perverse, it’s contradictory, it sounds hypocritical, I like being invisible. ‘A fucking actor? Who says he wants to be invisible? Oh yeah, good choice, mate.’ But the point is, you do get to become invisible as an actor. And I know that much of that also comes from [his pitch keens high as he breaks into a mock lament] growing up, moving around, different towns, and all that kind of stuff, and then getting attention at a very young age when you’re not ready for it and you have responsibilities, financial responsibilities, stuff which other people don’t get until much later in life.

“So you go, ‘Man, wasn’t it great before all this happened? Back when I was eight years old and I could go shoplift and nobody knew who I was and I was invisible.’ You know? And what glory days those were, and how I lost ’em too early. You know?”

“You sure missed quite a show yesterday at Ronni Chasen’s funeral,” a friend wrote this morning. “Every hypocrite in Hollywood was there, claiming to have been her dearest pal. And check this pic of someone who didn’t get a seat at Ronni’s service, and who ended up standing around the edge but at least got his mug in this L.A. Times photo since photographers weren’t allowed any closer to the event and were forced to shoot the standees.”

The caption for this L.A. Times photo, which accompanies Nicole Sperling’s account of yesterday’s service, reads as follows: “Men mourn the loss of Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen during her memorial service at the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Fox Hills on Sunday.”

At today’s Los Angeles reception for the late Ronni Chasen, “Some were disturbed to see The Wrap‘s Sharon Waxman, in her trademark blunt style, grilling folks, notebook in hand, about Chasen’s murder,” writes Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson. “Finally, this cross-section of the film community not only mourned the loss of a friend but of a way of working, a civilized discourse, and the arrival of a more tabloid sensibility in Hollywood coverage, especially of Chasen’s violent death.”

Today’s Oscar Poker discussion felt a little sloppy, a little in and out as we recorded it, but it sounds okay now. A debate about The King’s Speech and how “the older audience” is more comfortable with this film, a brief discussion of the Ronni Chasen tragedy, the business rules of the Oscar season, etc. Hollywood & Fine‘s Marshall Fine took part, as did regular box-office stalwart Phil Contrino of boxoffice.com. Here’s an independent, non-iTunes link.

While driving to Philadelphia last night I tweeted the following: “No matter what else happens, 2010 will always be the year that saw the demise of Michael Cera. No, they can’t take that away from me.” Just a mild little in-between tweet on the New Jersey Turnpike. No! Not mild! In response to this HitFix’s Drew McWeeny tweeted, “You are cancer in human form, you know that? Pure misery, sent outwards in miserable waves. Does anything give you joy?”

In short, McWeeny is apparently a Cera fan or an Edgar Wright/Scott Pilgrim vs. The World fan or perhaps feels a slight generational kinship on some level with Wright or Cera, or a combination of all three. I don’t want to get into a whole Cera thing (I gave all I had to give last summer), but we’re coming to the end of the year and I was in a sum-up mood and I honestly felt that the failure of Scott Pilgrim was a pretty good deal for reasons I’ve already stated.

For me, the misery emanates not from within myself, but from watching Cera do his droning Toronto nerd-hipster thing, over and over and over and over. And I’ve been talking about Cera being on the road to over for two years now, remember. I would honestly like to see him removed from a position of influence in the film industry (or at least diminished) in the same sense that anyone creating material considered to be boring or tedious by way of repetition should have to pay the piper.

As for the joy part, I think I’ve got that pretty well covered. I could list several thousand things that have given me joy (many of them films, or at least aspects of same), but why should I expend a Herculean effort and hours of typing just to respond to an emotional scold (and Sherlock Holmes apologist) like Drew McWeeny?

It was revealed earlier today that Swedish-born, Canadian-raised Malin Akerman, 32, has stepped into Lindsay Lohan‘s Linda Lovelace role in Matthew Wilder‘s Inferno. Wilder revealed a few days ago he’d all but bailed on Lohan due to delays in her drug-rehab program. Pic will begin shooting in February. Muse Productions’ Chris Hanley and Jordan Gertner will produce.

Mailn Akerman

Why play a role that will be mostly about sleazy humiliation and subjugation? Because Akerman has been kicking around for a while and has played almost nothing but girlfriends. Her role as Silk Spectre in Watchmen was the exception, but she’s had no lead roles, not even in shitty films, and Lovelace, at least, is a lead with tragic pathos.

Akerman has mostly co-starred in so-so, mostly not-so-hot comedies like 27 Dresses, Couples Retreat, The Proposal and The Heartbreak Kid (a decent Ben Stiller vehicle in which she played an obsessive nutcase), and the deplorable The Romantics, but nobody’s come out of these films saying, “Wow, exceptional Akerman performance!”

Akerman was in Josh Radnor‘s happythankyoumoreplease, a Sundance Audience Award winner that I called “a thoroughly artificial, Woody Allen-with-a-lobotomy 20something sitcom.” She also has a subordinate role in The Bang Bang Club, an apartheid drama that fizzled at Toronto. I don’t know anything about Catch .44, an “indie thriller” that she recently costarred in, but she probably has another so-so role in it.

Akerman can’t just skip along like this and she and her agent know it. She has to strike oil.

By honoring Rabbit Hole producer-star Nicole Kidman with a Cinema Vanguard Award at the 2011 Santa Barbara Film Festival (1.27 to 2.6), Roger Durling is saying the Best Actress Oscar race is now a three-way competition — Kidman vs. Natalie Portman vs. Annette Bening. I can buy into that. Becca Corbett, the grief-stricken wife in Rabbit Hole, is Kidman’s best role since her Oscar-winning Virginia Wolff in The Hours, which was eight years ago. And is arguably her most touching.

Disney Studios chairman Rich Ross speaking to Deadline‘s Pete Hammond: “The theory is pretty simple for us…It’s thrilling that there is a separate category for animation and that allows animated movies to be recognized but for some reason an animated film has never gotten Best Picture and I always wondered was there not an appetite? We decided this year we have the biggest and best reviewed film of the year. If not this year, and not this movie, when?”

HE answer: Never, that’s when. It’s not going to happen so forget it, Rich. Animation is its own realm, and a beautiful and transporting one it is. Toy Story 3 is unquestionably one of the the best films of the year, but it’s an animated thing and that puts it on the other side of the Rio Grande reality realm. And you, due respect, are denigrating your own thing by clamoring for a Best Picture Oscar, which obviously implies that you feel there’s something second-class about a Best Animated Feature Oscar. That’s in your mind, fella.

Best Picture Oscars are for movies that present biologically realistic images of flesh-and-blood people living and struggling in more or less recognizable real-world realms. And which generally don’t cater to family-style emotionality or try to excite children with cartoony tropes and extra-radiant, killer-diller digital imitations of real-world forms and textures. As tightly written and smartly structured and emotionally engaging as Michael Arndt‘s script is, what I’ve just described is the realm and the style of Toy Story 3. As on-target as the characters are and as spiritually complete as the film is, Toy Story 3 is a first-class, triple-A fucking cartoon. Deal with it, live in that territory, embrace that thing and shut up.

If a critics group gives TS3 a Best Picture award, cool. If several critics groups give it their Best Picture awards, cool. But winning the Best Picture Oscar is out. Stay on your side of the fence, be proud of your own thing, and be happy in your work.