There are very few things in the movie-regarding universe of less interest to anyone right now than what Mark Zuckerberg thinks about The Social Network, particularly regarding accuracy issues. The conflicted creation of Facebook was the raw material, and then Aaron Sorkin wrote a movie that works on its own terms with characters who hold water like a glass and a theme that sinks in and sticks around. The train has left the station, the metaphor is the metaphor, The Social Network has created its own mythology….go away.

Mark Zuckerberg is brilliant, cranked, positive-minded, and definitely spinning his story as best he can. And Jesse Eisenberg‘s version of him is ten times more interesting. As Stanley Kubrick said over and over, “Realistic is good, but interesting is better.”

Two things I can’t stand about Zuckerberg are (a) the way he uses that questioning “if that’s okay with you?” GenY tone when he’s speaking declarative sentences and (b) ends his statements with “uhm” every time he says anything that’s half dramatic. Example: “And then, uhm…I picked up this ancient Arabian sword? And…uhm, chopped off this guy’s head? And then the head, uhm…started rolling across the cafe floor? And it was…uhm, sort of spraying and splattering arterial blood in every direction?”

That said, Zuckerberg knows his game. The game, I mean. “The biggest risk is you can take is to take no risk,” he said during an on-stage Stanford discussion last year. Exactly.

What does this poster (snapped at the corner of Sixth Ave. and 57th Street about an hour ago) say above and beyond everything else? Answer: “This is a comfort movie about charming people with snappy repartee and big incomes, aimed at over-25 couples and women attending in groups of three and four. We will not surprise you — honest. And we probably won’t touch you that deeply, if at all. But you’ll laugh here and there, and have a moderately good time.

“What you can totally count on and take to the bank is that every last element in this film will be dead-ass familiar. And if we have anything else up our sleeve, we’re keeping it hidden for fear of discouraging ticket sales.”

In other words, Morning Glory (Paramount, 11.12) is about a youngish, super-smart TV morning-show producer (Rachel McAdams) grappling with a pair of bickering boomer co-hosts (Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton) over the tone and content of the show. Hopefully a bit more in the tradition of Broadcast News than Switching Channels with a little The Devil Wears Prada (i.e., Ford as Miranda) meets Working Girl seasoning. Or something like that. With Patrick Wilson as the proverbial peripheral domestic boyfriend who doesn’t do or say very much except listen to McAadam’s stories about what happened today at the studio.

Another simplistic equation would be to call it (a) a 2010 chick-flick aesthetic delivered by (b) a politically planted chick-formula screenwriter in the form of Aline Brosh McKenna (Prada, Laws of Attraction, 27 Dresses) and (c) massaged by the proficient but modified high-tonality of Roger Michell (Venus, Enduring Love, Changing Lanes, Notting Hill) in Nancy Meyers mode. Oh, well — at least it has Jeff Goldbum as an office smart-ass.

Showeast guy to TheWrap‘s Steve Pond in a 10.18 story: “I was surprised I liked it as much as I did, and most people seemed to feel the same way”…”it’s close to James L. Brooks territory, or to the border between Brooks and Nancy Meyers“…”very commercial, and the best use of Harrison Ford in a very long time”…”solid entertainment that in November will appeal to the over-30 audience in a way that nothing else will”…”not really an awards movie, although Harrison Ford has an outside chance.”

The only “what?” is this being a Bad Robot/J.J. Abrams production. Paramount producer: “We can’t let this thing get too rote or stodgy. We’ll all have to commit ritual seppuku if this turns into Switching Channels so how do we guard against this? Wait…JJ Abrams! He could broaden his sphere a bit by producing this. Climb out of that Mission Impossible/Cloverfield/Star Trek monster rut he’s been in. What’s his number?”

I like this kind of movie in theory, but you and I know it’s not going to be Broadcast News. You can, you can tell…you can tell. For guys like me walking around the mall and wondering what to see at the plex, the mantra to keep in mind is “be afraid, be very afraid, of Aline Brosh McKenna.” But maybe with Abrams presumably looking to contain her chick-flick instincts (or head them off at the pass), there’s hope.

One of the best-cut trailers of the year. Congrats to Mark Woollen of Mark Woollen & Associates.

“Jeez, why so down on Jackass 3D?,” a journalist friend wrote last night. “I love those Jackass movies, and obviously so do millions of other folks. They’re the modern version of the Three Stooges, and I laughed as hard at Jackass II as I did at Borat. We all know stupidity sells, especially self-aware stupidity, so why is Jackass any more deplorable than Meet the Fockers or the 40 Year Old Virgin or, dare I say it, Woody Allen films like Sleeper or Take the Money and Run?

“I think there’s too much of an elitist ‘holier than thou’ attitude among critics and blogger-critics who feel it necessary to hold their nose when discussing Jackass. But not me — I love Jackass and Wildboyz and Viva La Bam, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I also love Billy Wilder and Ernst Lubitsch and Jacques Tati and Peter Sellers and Animal House and the Marx Brothers and Chaplin, etc. So who has the more narrow-minded love of film?”

Wells to Journalist Pal: All I can say is that from this side of the divide, hating the Jackass franchise feels wonderful.

I’ve only begin to dip into Lionsgate’s Apocalypse Now Bluray, but so far it’s glorious. The only problem (and this is entirely the fault of my system) is that the bassy explosion sounds are overwhelming the speakers on my 42″ plasma. (Dynamic range and all that.) I’ll never forget my first exposure to the magnificent sub-woofer vibration — like some great rumbling earthquake — that came out of the Ziegfeld speakers when I first saw AN in 1979.

This is my favorite still from the film. The instant I saw it projected onto the Ziegfeld screen I said to myself, “Vittorio Storaro is a serious rock star.” I knew he’d done beautiful work on Bernardo Bertolucci‘s The Conformist and Last Tango in Paris, but the Apocalypse Now photography was thrilling, gleaming, “extra.”

The most frequently cited contender for the just-announced 2010 Gotham Independent Film Awards is Debra Granik‘s Winters Bone, which was nominated for Best Feature, Breakthrough Actor (Jennifer Lawrence) and Best Ensemble Performance. Lisa Cholodenko‘s The Kids Are All Right and Lena Dunham‘s Tiny Furniture received two nominations each.

The 20th annual Gotham Awards’ ceremony will be held on Monday, 11.29 at Cipriani Wall Street. Besides the awards presentations Robert Duvall, Hilary Swank, Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky and Focus Features CEO James Schamus will each be presented with a career tribute.

Best Feature nominees are Black Swan, Blue Valentine, The Kids Are All Right, Let Me In and Winter’s Bone. Wells to Gotham Awards committee: If you decide not to give the award to Black Swan, obviously the finest film in this bunch, please give it to poor little Let Me In, which really needs the attention.

Best Documentary nominees are 12th & Delaware (what’s that?), Inside Job, The Oath, Public Speaking and Sweetgrass. (And the reason that Amir Bar Lev‘s The Tillman Story, Alex Gibney‘s Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, Banksy‘s Exit Through The Gift Shop, Kate Davis and David Heilbroner‘s Stonewall Uprising, Vikram Jayanti‘s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector and Leon Gast‘s Smash His Camera weren’t nominated is….why again? I’m not clear on the criteria.)

Breakthrough Actor nominees include Prince Adu (Prince of Broadway), Ronald Bronstein (Daddy Longlegs), Greta Gerwig (Greenberg), Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone) and John Ortiz (Jack Goes Boating).

Tyler Perry‘s For Colored Girls is being promoted today with an online art gallery display designed by Lionsgate marketing director Tim Palen. The idea is to digitally animate eight portraits of Colored Girls actresses by making their eyes, lips and heads move as we hear dialogue from one of their scenes. This is way beyond the realm of Clutch Cargo, but the minimal-movement aesthetic triggered this association.

An actual real-world version of same will show in Manhattan’s Lehman Maupin Gallery (540 West 26th Street) from 10.24 through 10.27.

Palen’s “Living Portraits,” which he conceived of and directed, were shot on 35mm film.

I was surprised to discover that the 1.66 to 1 crop used in the new Criterion Bluray of Paths of Glory feels relatively satisfying. All I can finally say is that it looks “right,” as if 1.66 to 1 was the idea all along. And I sat down with this disc ready to dislike what I might see and totally prepared to complain. But it doesn’t look bad. None of the framings seem cramped or confined.

This is a significant admission for me as I’ve been a 1.33 to 1 aspect ratio purist all my life. I wrote in May 2009 that cropping Dr. Strangelove to 1.66, despite the 1.33 aspect ratio providing acres of luscious head-room, was unfortunate. And I’ve said time and again that the new Psycho Bluray is revisionist vandalism due to Alfred Hitchcock‘s 1960 classic having been cropped to 1.78 in order to fit high-def plasma and LCD screens, despite Psycho having been shown on TV for decades at a perfectly pleasing 1.33 to 1 shape.

A part of me would still prefer to see Stanley Kubrick‘s 1957 anti-war classic opened up to a boxier 1.33 to 1 aspect ratio. 1.33 framings are immaculate in my book because of the Hollywood Elsewhere extra-air-space and room-to-breathe headroom principle — i.e., the more space around and particularly above the actors heads, the more pleasing to the eye.

Criteron’s Bluray mastering is superb. It has grainy textures, but they’re acceptable to my eyes. The detail is improved, of course, and the monochromatic range seems greater than any version I’ve seen before (including 35mm projection). Those mild, mid-range grays seem more vivid and robust. And I love the heightened indications of moisture in the eyes of the soldiers, and the fibres on uniforms and overcoats coming through with greater clarity and relief.

Paths of Glory has never looked or felt as good as this. What a sensual bath this Bluray disc amounts to. Watching it is almost like lying on one of those portable fold-up tables and getting a facial.

“We are in the era of Republican Mean Girls,” Maureen Dowd wrote in a 10.17 N.Y. Times column, calling them “grown-up versions of those teenage tormentors who would steal your boyfriend, spray-paint your locker and, just for good measure, spread rumors that you were pregnant.

“These women — Jan, Meg, Carly, Sharron, Linda, Michele, Queen Bee Sarah and sweet wannabe Christine — have co-opted and ratcheted up the disgust with the status quo that originally buoyed Barack Obama. Whether they’re mistreating the help or belittling the president’s manhood, making snide comments about a rival’s hair or ripping an opponent for spending money on a men’s fashion show, the Mean Girls have replaced Hope with Spite and Cool with Cold. They are the ideal nihilistic cheerleaders for an angry electorate.”

A critic friend told me this morning that he had the same reaction to Chris Morris‘s Four Lions (Alamo Drafthouse, 11.5) that I did — astonishing concept (a suicide terrorist comedy), quite funny at times, but he couldn’t understand a fair portion of the dialogue due to the British working-class accents. They might as well be speaking Farsi.

“It was funny, or at least the parts I could understand,” he wrote. “Apparently they’re not putting subtitles on it, which is unfortunate because those accents were so thick and the sound so muddy as to be virtually indecipherable at times.”

My 1.24.10 Sundance review: “Early last evening I saw Chris Morris‘s Four Lions — an unsettling, at times off-putting, at other times genuinely amazing black political comedy about London-based Jihadists — Islamic radicalism meets the Four Stooges/Keystone Cops. It’s sometimes shocking and sometimes heh-heh funny, and occasionally hilarious.

“Morris uses a verbal helter-skelter quality reminiscent of In The Loop, and yet the subject is appalling — a team of doofuses who dream of bombing and slaughtering in order to enter heaven and taste the fruit of virgins. It’s amazing and kind of pleasing that a comedy of this sort has been made, but I don’t want to think about the reactions in Manhattan once it opens.

“At times it felt flat and frustrating (I couldn’t understand half of it due to the scruffy British accents) and at other times I felt I was watching something akin to Dr. Strangelove — ghastly subject matter leavened with wicked humor.

“An agent I spoke to after the screening said, ‘I don’t know if the American public is ready for this film.’ He’s probably right, but Four Lions is an absolute original — I’ve never seen anything like it, nor have I have ever felt so torn in my reactions. I’d love to see it again, but with subtitles.”

As some may have seen, there was a two-minute piece on David O. Russell‘s The Fighter that ran during Sunday night’s Mad Men finale. Here are link #1 and link #2 to the 1080 encodes.