About 13 months ago I posted an observation about a tendency of younger women to project thin little pipsqueak voices and use mallspeak accents and phrasings in order to sound average and blend into the crowd. I flashed back to this a few nights ago as I listened to Cowboys & Aliens star Olivia Wilde talk to Jimmy Kimmel. She’s beautiful but her voice has no particular flavor and distinction.

Wilde is supposed to be a star in the making but she sounds like a checkout girl. Her voice is almost stunning in its flatness, and it makes her sound glib and unexceptional. She opens her mouth and…that’s it? A woman with a face as exquisite as Wilde’s ought to have some kind of soulful, cultured, knowing, inner-oomph voice to go with it…but no.

I had the same reaction to Blake Lively‘s voice when she visited Late Night with David Letterman to plug The Town. This? She sounds like a sixteen year-old from a suburb of Akron or Denver or Orlando, or…I don’t know, somebody who works for a downtown Manhattan accounting firm. She doesn’t sound like a tenacious lady who’s been around and taken legendary iPhone pics of herself in the bathroom and portrayed a frayed floozy in The Town and who will soon be swirling around Europe with Leonardo DiCaprio.

Who has a voice that matters? One with a little sass and intrigue and conviction, that cracks at times or has a breathy quality? Emma Stone, for sure. Elle Fanning has a voice with faint undercurrents of hurt and need. Amy Adams has a voice in The Fighter that suffers no fools. Katie Holmes‘ voice has a genuine something-or-other…a “been-around and known some disappointment” quality. Kristen Stewart sounds like she’s actually lived a life and has some convictions about this and that. Cameron Diaz sounds like a girly-girl, but her voice has a playful spirited quality and she knows how to sound hurt and nihilistic. Debra Winger has a real voice. Sassy Fran Drescher obviously had a voice in the ’90s. Michele Rodriguez has a voice right now.

Here’s that June 2010 piece I mentioned, called “Chirpy Minnie Mouse.”

“It hit me a day or two ago that an awful lot of women these days — actresses and broadcasters to some extent, but mainly average, non-famous women in the under-30 range (including movie publicists) — speak with thin little pipsqueak voices. Couple this with a general tendency to use mallspeak accents and phrasings (which 85% to 90% of under-30 women have done in order to sound like everyone else) and it almost seems as if inane peep-peep voices have become a kind of generational signature.

“Go to any bar and restaurant and walk around and listen to women’s voices…’peepity-peep-peep’ and ‘squeakity-squeak-squeak,’ over and over and over.

“For whatever reason these women have decided that sultry, smoky, husky voices — the kind that Lauren Bacall and Glenda Jackson and Anne Bancroft and Patricia Neal used to play like soulful wind instruments — aren’t as appealing or have perhaps been categorized as unattractive, and that they need to project more of an amiable ‘oop-poop-pee-doop’ Betty Boop thing.

“I’m obviously not reporting scientific data, but it does seem as if an awful lot of Minnie Mouse voices are being feigned or emphasized these days, and that the rich, intriguing tonalities found in the wonderfully adult voices of Meryl Streep or Ann Sheridan in the 1940s, or Jessica Lange or Katherine Hepburn or Greer Garson or Faye Dunaway or Jodie Foster aren’t heard as much.

“You can’t be one of those super-cool women who wear short skirts and long jackets and speak with a peep-peep voice. You have to sound like Anouk Aimee or Simone Signoret or Joan Crawford or Jane Russell….that line of country.

“I really do think it’s affected to some extent. Chosen. Performed. Almost anyone can go deeper or higher if they want.

“There’s that old story about director Howard Hawks telling a young Lauren Bacall (i.e., before he cast her in To Have and Have Not) that it’s sexier to speak in a lower register, and that she should give it a shot. Bacall took Hawks’ advice and trained herself to speak with a deeper voice. It was that simple.

“So if Bacall can do this, anyone can in either direction. And I think — suspect — that a lot of younger women have persuaded themselves, perhaps not consciously, that squeaky-peepy works best in today’s environment. Mistake.”

The bloggerati have been salivating all day over the apparently distinct possibility that the under-performing, flopping-around-like-a-flounder-on-the-sand Cowboys & Aliens will come in second for the weekend behind the horribly vile, reprehensible, apocalypse-summoning Smurfs. I’ve been too settled and soothed in Santa Barbara to care, but I know that David Poland‘s Cowboys & Aliens pan is good stuff.

Sunday morning update: Variety‘s Andrew Stewart is reporting that reps for Smurfs and Cowboys & Aliens are both estimating $36.2 million for the weekend, “leaving no room for a clear winner until [actuals] are released on Monday.”

Earlier: “According to Universal’s North American box office stats, Cowboys & Aliens opened only #2 Friday with $12.994 million, beaten by the $13.29 million debut of Sony Pictures’ The Smurfs,” Nikki Finke reported about five hours ago. “But Universal is still claiming its Western/scifi mashup should come in #1 for the weekend at $36.78 million, behind the little blue guys toon’s $36.02 million. Or is that only wishful thinking at this point?

“Smurfs is really overperforming while Cowboys & Aliens is way behind expectations to the point of tanking.”

Either somebody at Movie City News didn’t get the memo, or David Poland decided to ease up on Islamic Jihad just this once. For the first time in many years Movie City News today linked to a story of mine on Hollywood Elsewhere. It’s been a longstanding policy of Poland’s to ferociously ignore anything I write. My policy, on the other hand, has always been to link to a Poland riff or post an excerpt whenever he writes something cool or nervy (like when he zings Nikki Finke).

I’m a fair-minded Anglo-Saxon Protestant — I don’t do Jihads. I’m presuming I’ll be back on the MCN Shit List after this, but it was nice to see the link.

I drove up to Santa Barbara this morning to attend a screening of Mike Cahill and Brit Marling‘s Another Earth, which opened on 7.22 to mostly positive reviews. I wrote on 7.19 that while “it’s partly a sci-fi fantasy about the approach of a second earth, it’s mainly about loss and recovery and redemption” and as such is one of the year’s most intriguing indies, particularly for its emotional, skillfully under-written quality.

At today’s lawn luncheon following 11 am Santa Barbara screening of Another Earth — (l. to r.) costar William Mapother, star-cowriter-co-producer Brit Marling, Santa Barbara Film Festival honcho Roger Durling, director-cowriter Mike Cahill.

The first thing I did when I slipped into the darkened Riviera Theatre during the 11 am showing was to take a nap. The floor was so hard it almost hurt to lie on my back but I went right out. I woke up for the q & a. Costar William Mapother, star-cowriter-coproducer Brit Marling and director-cowriter Mike Cahill kicked it around with Santa Barbara Film Festival director Roger Durling.

Then everyone went over to a nice outdoor garden party at a beautiful classic Spanish home, hosted by owners Marilyn Jorgenson and Errol Jahnke. Lots of nice food and not too many guests, and everyone in a nice mild mood. The back yard had fenced-in chickens and a dog who liked playing tug-of-war with a stick.

The sun was so hot that after an hour or so I began to slowly melt like the Wicked Witch of the West…”destroying my beautiful wickedness!” Plus I was wearing mostly black just like Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard of Oz so it all fit together. You don’t ever want to be standing in the hot sun with a slight wine buzz-on. It doesn’t feel right.

I spoke to Marling for a few minutes. I asked how many times she’d done the same dog-and-pony show with Cahill and Mapother since the Sundance debut six months ago. I wasn’t trying to trip her up by asking how bored she was getting from doing interviews, but simply how many times. Her answer — i.e., that she loves doing them and that today’s event was really special — told me she’s very political. Then she let her guard down and admitted there’s only one more to go…fine.

We spoke briefly about Nick Jarecki‘s Arbitrage, a financial chicanery drama in which she plays Richard Gere‘s daughter along with costars Eva Green and Susan Sarandon. It’s now being edited with a possibility of screening at Sundance 2012, Jarecki told me.

It’s very curious that Another Earth and Lars von Trier‘s Melancholia are so similar — both being about approaching planets getting closer and closer, but really about people with significant emotional and spiritual issues. And that these films were first seen at 2011 film festivals only four months apart. Cahill, Marling and Mapother all said they haven’t seen the Von Trier.

(l. to r.) Cahill, Marling and Durling during q & a at Riviera Theatre, which followed 11 am screening.

It’s conceivable that Tomas Alfredson‘s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Focus Features, 11.18) might play the New York Film Festival following its Venice Film Festival debut, but it definitely won’t play the Toronto Film Festival. Deadline‘s Pete Hammond reminded me this morning that he reported this four days ago (on 7.26) in his piece about Oscar-season shufflings. My bad — I focused that day only on Paramount’s decision not to put Jason Reitman‘s Young Adult into any of the fall festivals.

On the other hand Hammond buried his revelation about Tinker, Tailor in the fourth paragraph of his story, so I’m not entirely out to lunch.

I asked yesterday if Tinker Tailor might eventually be confirmed as a Toronto Film Festival attraction or perhaps as a New York Film Festival closing-nighter or centerpiece. It would make sense to screen it at one of these two festivals following its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, or concurrently with Venice at Telluride.

I asked the Focus Features gang and the N.Y. Film Festival crew for help, and they both stonewalled me. Even when I asked them to at least confirm yea or nay about Toronto being a no-go…silence. Focus played hide-the-ball last year with Sofia Coppola ‘s Somewhere, showing it at Venice but otherwise dodging the fall festivals. Will they repeat this strategy for Tinker Tailor? Possibly, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a NYFF deal is announced soon.

I wonder what ESPN’s Bill Simmons thinks about Young Adult side-stepping the festival circuit. On 7.6 he said during an ESPN B.S. report with Chris Connelly that he’d caught a screening of Adult and felt it was “tremendous.” I need to write or call him.

Last night Politikien‘s Nils Thoren ran comments from Danish director Lars Von Trier about reports that the now-shuttered Facebook page belonging to Anders Behring Breivik, the 32 year-old rightwing terrorist responsible for the recent Oslo bombing and the 69 murders on the Norweigan island of Utoya, listed Von Trier’s Dogville (’03) as Breivik’s third-favorite film.

(l.) Melancholia and Dogville director Lars von Trier; (r.) Danish People’s Party figurehead Pia Merete Kjaersgaard.

Von Trier is of course no more responsible for Breivik’s carnage than Catcher in the Rye author J.D. Salinger was responsible for Mark David Chapman‘s 1980 killing of John Lennon. And yet Breivik’s stated admiration of Dogville does suggest that Von Trier’s 2003 drama may have influenced him on some level.

Breivik’s Facebook page listed Dogville as his third favorite film right behind Gladiator and 300, and “even von Trier could easily discern the similarities between the carnage at Utoya and the film’s ending,” Thoren writes.

Dogville, one of Von Trier’s best, ends with Nicole Kidman‘s Grace, who’s been exploited and sexually abused by Dogville’s citizenry, ordering the pistols who work for her gangster dad (James Caan) to mow them all down with machine-gun fire.

“I feel badly about thinking that Dogville, which in my eyes is one of my most successful films, should have been a kind of script for him,” Von Trier said. “It’s horrific.

“My intention with Dogville was totally opposite. Namely, to ask whether we can accept a protagonist who takes revenge on the entire village. And here I take the absolute distance from revenge. It’s a way to nuance the protagonist and our feelings and perhaps even uncover it, so it just is not black and white ‘.

And yet Thoren reports that “even Trier believes that Dogville‘s final scene brings very unpleasant memories of Utoya.”

“And you can ask if I regret making the film,” Von Trier is quoted as saying. “And yes, if it was an inspiration, I’m sorry that I made it. But of course I have educational purposes with my films, even if I hesitate to admit it, and my views are the complete opposite of Breivik and his deeds.”

Von Trier said he also believes that all of Denmark needs to look inward after the tragedy in Norway.

“The other day asked a Belgian journalist Von Trier, a Dane, how he feels about the reported fact that Breivik’s manifesto repeatedly emphasizes Denmark as the only decent country because of the Danish policy towards Muslims,” Thoren writes.

“‘It makes me really hurt, but I understand it well,’ Von Trier replied. ‘We might have saved the children and young people on the island [if we had] done much more with Danish People’s Party. For it is the change in attitude which they have provoked, and as we just have let happen, we are paying the price for now.’

“I am no expert in politics, but as I see it, there has for years been a strong Danish tradition of fears of Islam. They have committed atrocious legislative efforts to annoy the minority here and pursue a policy that is well in line with what Breivik preaches. The fhostility to foreigners then spreads to the entire Nordic region and is also present in the minds of Breivik and gives him perhaps the excuse he needs. Therefore I can not see anything other than that we as a nation bears a responsibility for the tragedy in Norway.”

Is there a link between saying what one thinks about immigration and then resorting to violence?

“Of course. And everyone must say what they want. Freedom of speech is the whole cornerstone of our democracy. But it does not exempt [one] from liability. And we have sent the signal that it’s okay to spread hatred against Muslims. Especially after the Danish Peoples Party has been the government’s support party. Because when you lean up against the party and say: Okay, the positions we take in the bargain. So you legitimize them. ”

“I think there is a direct line from Pia Kjaergaard‘s humanity and to Utoya. One must demand that Kjaersgaard steps forward and takes her share of responsibility for what has happened in Norway. For it is a change of attitude, as she and her party have successfully represented

Pia Merete Kjaersgaard “is a co-founder and current leader of the Danish People’s Party, a nativist, national conservative political party in Denmark,” says her Wiki page. “She has become one of the best known politicians in Denmark during recent years, partly for her stance against multiculturalism, unwavering anti-immigration stance and partly for her parliamentary support for the center-right governments of Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Lars Lokke Rasmussen since 2001.”

In Contention‘s Guy Lodge believes right now that The Artist, The Descendants, The Ides of March, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Tree of Life and War Horse are the most likely 2011 Best Picture nominees. Yes, six.

Nobody knows anything but I say “no” to The Artist (too French) and The Tree of Life (too Malicky). My Best Picture guesstimates: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (highly affecting emotional current), The Descendants (quality death-in-a-family film), The Iron Lady (obligatory British-ruling-class entry), Moneyball (professional baseball meets Social Network-like approach), War Horse (poor sad traumatized horse), We Bought A Zoo (another family film) and possibly The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo…depending how extreme Fincher goes and what kind of a hit it becomes. Yes, seven nominations. Or six.

Having seen Farragut North, I know it’s possible that The Ides of March might qualify, but it’s mainly about a younger opportunist getting punished for being disloyal and I’m not sure how much that will resonate with Academy blue-hairs. I suspect that Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is going to register as too cerebral and subdued and intellectually labrynthian to penetrate as a Best Picture pick. Maybe. I don’t know anything, but I know the Le Carre book and the British miniseries.

“The facts of the crisis over the debt ceiling aren’t complicated,” writes N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman in a 7.28 posting. “Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions they would never have been able to enact through legislation.

“And Democrats — who would have been justified in rejecting this extortion altogether — have, in fact, gone a long way toward meeting those Republican demands.

“As I said, it’s not complicated. Yet many people in the news media apparently can’t bring themselves to acknowledge this simple reality. News reports portray the parties as equally intransigent; pundits fantasize about some kind of ‘centrist’ uprising, as if the problem was too much partisanship on both sides.

“Some of us have long complained about the cult of ‘balance,’ the insistence on portraying both parties as equally wrong and equally at fault on any issue, never mind the facts. I joked long ago that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read ‘Views Differ on Shape of Planet.’

“But would that cult still rule in a situation as stark as the one we now face, in which one party is clearly engaged in blackmail and the other is dickering over the size of the ransom?

“The answer, it turns out, is yes. And this is no laughing matter: The cult of balance has played an important role in bringing us to the edge of disaster. For when reporting on political disputes always implies that both sides are to blame, there is no penalty for extremism. Voters won’t punish you for outrageous behavior if all they ever hear is that both sides are at fault.”

Manhattan-based HE reader Chris attended last night’s GenArts screening of 30 Minutes or Less (Sony, 8.12) and came away mildly pleased, calling it a “fun comedy worth checking out.” But costar Danny McBride, he says, “proves once again that less is more with him…he has some funny moments, but also had many parts that fell flat and were met with near-silence.”

Pic is “loosely based on an unusual bank robbery which occurred on August 28, 2003 in Erie, Pennsylvania,” says the Wiki page, “in which pizza delivery man Brian Wells was killed when a bomb fastened to his neck detonated once he was apprehended by police.”

Synopsis: “After hiring an assassin to murder his father for his insurance money, the antagonist, Dwayne (Danny McBride), and partner in crime Travis (Nick Swardson), kidnap a pizza delivery guy named Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) and force him to rob a bank while wearing a bomb vest attached to a 10-hour timer.”

Chris says “the entire premise is absurd, of course…it’s a little strange how Eisenberg’s character is chosen to pull of the heist. But if you don’t get too caught up in these things and can accept the basic premise, there’s a good time to be had.

“Eisenberg and Aziz Ansari are the highlights, and their interplay as best friends with some baggage is a lot of fun. Not exactly groundbreaking stuff, but these guys make it work.

“I didn’t fully buy into the inherent danger of what was happening at all times, but then again I’m not sure I was supposed to. I didn’t see Zombieland, but enjoyed this enough to check it out, which qualifies as a recommendation in my book.”

I asked “what are the big knockout scenes that really work?”, etc.

“The bank robbery scene and the leadup to tjhat were my favorite scenes, with a few legitimately hilarious beats,” he said. “The whole thing is a credit to Eisenberg and Ansari playing two guys who are gaining an excessive amount of confidence as they go along, yet are still clearly amateurs at this whole crime thing. Their interplay throughout made the movie for me, and its the best thing about it by far.

“Another highlight is Michael Pena as the hitman hired to kill McBride’s father. There’s also a little love story involving Eisenberg and Ansari’s twin sister, that doesn’t hurt the movie, but isn’t important other to bring conflict between the two friends.

“Again, the thing that drags the movie down is McBride. I really enjoy Eastbound and Down, but that character is perfect for that show. Trying to apply that archetype character to so many other vehicles is a huge mistake. In the end the character he plays in this is just a pathetic loser, not exactly what you want from one of your main characters even if he’s supposed to be inept.

“When 30 Minutes or Less is ‘on’ it’s really firing on all cylinders. It just can’t keep that going consistently the whole way through. It’s a movie that tops out at ‘decent’ and holds that level.”

Due respect but I feel it’s a mistake to repeat the same clips in a trailer, even if the idea is to (a) show, (b) reverse-shift and then (c) return and repeat. The same clips of Kate Bosworth are shown twice in the recently posted official trailer for Rod Lurie‘s Straw Dogs. I’m especially bothered by one at the 28 second and 1:58 mark in which Bosworth talks about “men with guns,” etc. I don’t mean to rag but it doesn’t work.

Captured at 28-second mark of new Straw Dogs trailer.

Screen grab from trailer at 1 minute, 58-second mark.

Could the World War 2 dogfight sequences in this trailer for George Lucas‘s Red Tail (1.20.12) look any more fake? What a non-pleasure it’ll be to wallow in visual values and terms that have nothing to do with 1940s verisimilitude and everything to do with Lucas wanting to slick this thing up as much as possible.

Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrence Howard are the costars.

Lucas has been struggling with this sucker since filming began in March 2009 and reshoots happened in March 2010. Obviously it’s a troubled and ungenuine enterprise. Failure of this sort couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. The director of record is Anthony Hemingway.

From the Wiki page: “Production began in March 2009. Principal photography took place in the Czech Republic, Italy, Croatia and England. Lucas took over direction of reshoots, in March 2010 as Hemingway was busy working on episodes of the HBO series Treme. Hemingway will have final approval over the footage.”