I have two minor issues with the Drew McWeeny/Darren Aronofsky/Hitfix riff that was posted last weekend. Okay, one minor one and another that I could almost call major in a fundamental/cultural sense.

Adam Kubert illustration from 11.13 Hitfix article about a discussion between Drew McWeeny and Darren Aronofsky. Kubert “is just one of the many artists who have sent Wolverine to Japan over the years,” it says, “and now Darren Aronofsky is set to do the same.”

An illustration caption in the McWeeny article suggests that The Wolverine, which will be dp’ed by Matthew Libatique (Black Swan, The Fountain, Cowboys and Aliens), will be locationed in Japan. That scares me a bit. Go to Japan and your movie becomes a flamboyant acrobatic action-flash samurai-yakuza cartoon. I’ve loved Ichi the Killer and High and Low and dozens of Japanese-shot thrillers and action films over the decades, but visiting American filmmakers have this tendency to objectify and sanctify Japanese culture in a big-budgety, broad-stroke ways.

I’m sure there are U.S.-shot, Japan-based action thrillers that I’ve really enjoyed besides Ridley Scott‘s Black Rain and Sydney Pollack ‘s The Yakuza, but they’re not coming to mind. I know that quiet and meditation and small-scale simplicity don’t seem to factor in very much. Don’t even mention Kill Bill‘s Japanese section, which I found more or less ridiculous.

On top of which I’ve been developing this idea for years about Japan being a profoundly depressing place. Gaspar Noe‘s Enter the Void may have finally convinced me of this. Japan seems like one big Los Angeles strip mall these days. A strip mall with nicely landscaped gardens. I’m totally fine with the idea of never visiting there. I’ve never wanted to, really. Too crowded, too commercial, too expensive, and too sprawling. Plus they kill dolphins and eat them.

I also have a problem with McWeeny calling Libatique “Matty.” That feels like forced familiarity. I’m obviously not one to talk with my having adopted Bennett Miller‘s “Philly” in references to Phillip Seymour Hoffman, but Matty is somehow different. To me it’s in the same realm as Danny and Frankie.

Just so we’re straight: Mattie is bad, Danny is bad, and Frankie is bad…but Philly is somehow okay.

I’m probably more surprised than most by Criterion’s decision to issue a colorized 3-D surround-sound Bluray of Alexander Mackendrick‘s Sweet Smell of Success next February. Seriously, I do hope and trust, in fact, that Criterion will make this Bluray look like an actual 1957 black-and-white celluloid film. I can’t wait to see how the sad-eyed Barbara Nichols will look extra-silvery and glimmery.

Yesterday N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman explained in a roundabout way why a strong leftist-activist needs to run against President Obama in the 2012 Democratic primaries. Obama needs to “find it within himself to use his power, to actually take a stand,” Krugman writes, “[but] the signs aren’t good.”

“Orange symbology is so burned into general public consciousness that it almost diminishes the natural attractiveness of orange in nature — the fruit, the occasional flower, the oriole, sunsets. Notice that nature is tasteful enough to use orange very sparingly. Nature knows what Frank Sinatra and Olly Moss didn’t recognize — that orange used with any kind of force or emphasis feels a bit oppressive.

“It’s a safety color when you’re hunting or working construction or standing on a busy traffic road in the evening, but it’s also a kind of control color — a symbol used to enforce rules and segregate prisoners and make people stay within boundaries. Orange doesn’t say “life can occasionally be beautiful or transporting.” It says ‘do this,’ ‘watch out,’ ‘don’t go there,’ ‘slow down,’ etc.” — from “Orange, Part 2,” posted on 8.5.10.

Today Art of the Title celebrated the opening credits sequence in Martin Scorsese‘s Mean Streets (’73). They don’t offer embed codes, of course, so I went to YouTube and decided that the pool-room brawl scene makes for a better tribute. De Niro’s energy was astonishing back then. Anyone who knows him only from the ’90s onward doesn’t know the half of it.

I’ll soon have a chance to sit down with Paprika Steen, the Danish actress best known for Susanne Bier‘s Open Hearts and Thomas Vinterberg‘s The Celebration. She’s said to be staggering as an alcoholic actress in Martin Pieter Zandvliet‘s Applause (WWMP, 12.3). I wouldn’t know myself. I’m not seeing the film until Thursday.

“Ms. Steen doesn’t just surpass herself in Applause — she gives one of the best screen performances of the year,” wrote Karen Durbin in the N.Y. Times on 10.29.

“[She] plays Thea, a famous theater actress fresh from a lengthy stint in alcohol rehab who is eager to regain at least partial custody of her two young sons. Applause intercuts the tense drama of her troubled present with pungent flashbacks to Thea triumphant as the drunken Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? We see that she was not only great but, once offstage, viciously abusive to her young dresser.

“Playing an alcoholic has been known to bring out the scenery chomper in the best of actors. Ms. Steen never puts a foot wrong, even though she’s playing two alcoholics, wild Martha with the meat-cleaver mouth and the more alienated, calculating Thea.

“There are no melodramatics in the latter portrayal, just a silent, simmering rage at everyone but her children, a tormented sense of being forever on the outside looking in, and a self-destructiveness so willful that when her ex-husband lets her take the boys on an outing near a lake, it’s impossible not to think she’s going to drown them.

“To say that Ms. Steen commands this film is no exaggeration. She’s in every scene, with Thea’s drink-ravaged face often shot in unforgiving close-up. There is even a single eerie, fleeting moment when we can’t tell if she’s Martha or Thea: Ms. Steen is that good.

“Thea’s story is harrowing. Yet for all the pain she depicts, Ms. Steen is delving so deep and with such unerring precision into the human psyche, not even for a moment do we want to look away.”

A young guy I know broke up with his girlfriend last night. He was looking for an actual boyfriend-girlfriend thing, and she turned out to be a bit too aloof and casual-minded. I offered a little solace by quoting the following line, which is from a well-respected late ’70s film: “Jesus…you know, I knew you were crazy when we started going out. You always think you’re gonna be the one that makes ’em act different, but…”

I was under this vague impression that if somebody “friends” you on Facebook they’re stating a willingness to converse a tiny bit. In a sort of tappity-tap-tap way, I mean. You send them a note and they write back, etc. But apparently not. I sent a friend request to an ex-girlfriend a while back and she accepted — cool. But that was it. I’ve followed up a couple of times, and Ingmar Bergman‘s The Silence has nothing on her. Same deal with a marketing exec for a major distributor. She accepted, I wrote back…zip. Facebook is nothing. It’s contact without contact. It’s about nominal acknowledgement, if that.

Is it fair to ask if Harrison Ford is over in the wake of Morning Glory‘s box-office shortfall? Fair or not, they’re doing it. The LA Times‘ Stephen Zeitchik hammered the poor guy this morning for his “marginality” and “obscurity.” Which more or less echoed what Atlantic Wire‘s Eric Hayden wrote last Friday.

Ford is too mopey, too weathered, too glum and over the hill, they’re basically saying.

I for one felt that Ford’s snarly, misanthropic, pissed-off news anchor in Morning Glory was not only his best role but his best performance in years, but what do I know? A movie buff I know saw Morning Glory last night and feels that Ford is “perfect.” But Joe and Jane Popcorn didn’t share this enthusiasm, apparently, to go by last weekend’s $9.6 million haul.

Ford’s role in Jon Favreau‘s Cowboys & Aliens is a real quickie so that’s not much to hang onto. Judging by the comic, I deduced last April that “the only guy whom Ford could possibly play is a 60ish U.S. Cavalry Colonel who refers to Native Americans as ‘filthy savages’ and is soon after wasted by the aliens. A cameo, in short — two or three minutes and hasta la vista.”

If someone has a PDF of Natalie Portman and Laura Moses‘ BYO, allegedly a kind of “female-themed Superbad [about] a pair of twentysomething women who, after finding themselves unlucky in love, decide to throw a party to which each female attendee brings an eligible bachelor,” please forward. Not for review or anything — I just wanna read it.

L.A. Times guy Stephen Zeitchik reported on 11.12 that “the project [described in the headline as a raunchy comedy] has been passed on by several Hollywood studios [but] could still get made via either a studio or, more likely, via independent financing.

“Portman would star as one of the female leads and produce the movie. Studio executives [who’ve read the script] said they’ve been told Anne Hathaway has expressed interest in the second lead role.”

Early yesterday afternoon Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone and I recorded Oscar Poker #8 with guest Scott Feinberg, owner/editor of www.scottfeinberg.com, and Boxoffice.com‘s Phil Contrino. Here’s a straight link sans iTunes.

And we just, like, covered everything. Topics included (a) the undeniably powerful but extremely tedious and tiring Harry Potter franchise, (b) the sudden arrival of The Fighter and how exciting it feels to have a new live-wire, blue-collar contender in the race that just wipes the floor with The Town in terms of Massachusetts authenticity,(c) the unfortunate or unfair political standard that “artists with issues” are frequently judged by, (d) the Annette Bening and Michael Douglas questions, and (e) how sex — “the shiny thing” — tends to insert itself into Best Actress campaigns, and (f) the sexuality in I Am Love (particularly my feeling that the guy Tilda Swinton has the hot affair with isn’t tall or broad-shouldered enough for her, and is too bushy-bearded) and Blue Valentine.

Just give it a listen. It lasts for a good hour-plus, but what is length?