I tried to get into a couple of Guard screenings at Sundance…couldn’t. Tried to make an LA screening last week…didn’t. Want to attend a screening next Monday evening (6.13)…we’ll see how that goes. Something is holding me back.

From my 9.13 Toronto Film Festival review: “Who in Errol Morris‘s Tabloid can you believe? Or rather, who do you want to believe? Or what slant on the Tabloid story do you feel better about accepting as probable truth?

“That’s the key consideration, I think. Apart from the fact that everyone should try to see this deliciously entertaining, thoroughly bizarre comedy doc.”

Tabloid will ostensibly open via Sundance Selects on 7.15 (although you’d never it from the website).

On 5.27 I described Elle Fanning‘s big moment in Super 8 — a moment that suspends the film in a kind of crush vibe for about 30 or 40 seconds.

N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott agrees. Having joined the cast of a super-8 zombie movie called The Case, Fanning’s Alice character delivers “the best moment in both that movie and Super 8, a scene in which Ms. Fanning and her character, in different ways, demonstrate their impressive acting chops.”

The assumption is that all slips of the tongue are 100% Freudian — that all accidental utterances are very much on the speaker’s mind. I guess there’s no other explanation. I love the pleading look (“No…tell me I didn’t just say that!”) flashing on the face of WDBJ anchor Holly Pietrzak. Uploaded on 6.8; famous forever.

Last night’s Super 8 premiere offered (a) a spritzy party vibe inside the Fox Village lobby and theatre before the film began (i.e., roam-around, schmooze-around) and (b) a post-premiere outdoor street soiree with all kinds of Middle-American munch food (corndogs, taters, Fatburgers). I chatted with director JJ Abrams and almost everyone else except costars Elle Fanning, who apparently left the after-party early on, and Kyle Chandler.

Elle Fanning facing shouting-animal paparazzi prior to last night’s Super 8 premiere screening at Westwood’s Fox Village — Thursday, 6.8, 6:55 pm.

Super 8 producer Steven Spielberg came to the screening (black garb, black baseball hat, white hair) but didn’t attend the party.

I spoke before the screening to Transformers: Dark of the Moon director Michael Bay about the Chicago wing flyers he used for his upcoming film, and my theory that most people don’t really believe anything they see on the screen these days, etc. He told me about the 3-D helmet cameras that he used to shoot the stunt flyers, and expressed interest in my Canon Elph 300 (which I always have slung around my neck). My parting comment was a recommendation that he see Nicolas Winding Refn‘s Drive.

Super 8 costar Ben Gavin (who plays one of the deputies), star Joel Courtney during the wind-down phase of outdoor Super 8 after-party.

Pete Hammond, Super 8 director JJ Abrams.

(l. to r.) Super 8 costars Gabriel Basso, Riley Griffiths, Ryan Lee.

Thursday, 6.8, 9:45 pm

Tom Cruise, Elle Fanning — pic stolen from Huffington Post Entertainment page.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon director Michael Bay

Super 8 costar Jessica Tuck, whose looking-out-the-window-at-Joe moment at the very beginning provides Super 8‘s first emotional touchstone.

Super 8 costars Kyle Chandler, Elle Fanning.

I’m not saying TotalFilm‘s Jamie Graham is necessarily a guy to listen to, but why the mysterious shroud of silence hanging over those Bad Teacher screenings that happened last weekend? I only know that the trailer-fed optimism of early May seems to be ebbing.

No unshot movie will ever fill me with such apoplectic loathing as Jerry Bruckheimer and Gore Verbinski‘s The Lone Ranger, which will hit screens in December 2012. There’s no option for Johnny Depp but to portray Tonto as a Native American Jack Sparrow. And poor Armie Hammer, such a perfect fit as the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network, using his straightforward blue-eyed jockiness to play the Lone Ranger? In a script written by the thoroughly corrupted Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio? The only element affording a sliver of hope is that Revolutionary Road screenwriter Justin Haythe is co-credited.

Earlier today Boxoffice.com‘s Phil Contrino told me he’s predicting a $31 million opening for Super 8 this weekend.

“I think the opening weekend is not nearly as important for a film like this because it has the potential to show some serious staying power once all the secrets are out and people start talking about it,” Contrino observes. “People are too quick to label something a flop. With Super 8, I want to see how it does over the course of three weekends, not just one.

“The elephant in the room is X-Men: First Class. The buzz surrounding that one is very strong, and that’s going to hurt Super 8 since they are both gunning largely for males 18 to 34. X-Men will certainly have a direct impact on Super 8‘s opening.”

Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone and I recorded Oscar Poker #35 a day and a half ago. We discussed Beginners and X-Men: First Class, but mainly got into speculating about the likeliest 2011 Best Picture nominees. Here’s a non-iTunes, stand-alone link.

Chris Weitz‘s A Better Life (Summit, 6.24) is a simple, earnest, bare-bones drama. It has dignity and humanity and, for me, across-the-board believability. It’s a solid, honest film that deserves patronage and respect and year-end tributes. Particularly because of strong co-lead performances from Damian Bichir and newcomer Jose Julian. I can’t put it any plainer than that.

A Better Life is basically an LA Latino riff on Vittorio De Sica ‘s The Bicycle Thieves (whether it was intended to be seen in this light or not) and as such is genuinely moving, if a little too grim and deflating at times.

I’m not setting A Better Life up for a fall by comparing it to De Sica’s 1948 classic. It’s not a beat-for-beat remake (the screenplay was apparently based on a true-life L.A. story) but it does use the basic Bicycle bones by being largely about a poor, illegal-alien Latino father (Bichir) struggling to reclaim a recently purchased pickup truck that’s been stolen by another poor man, and with the help of his teenage son (Julian).

It’s basically a tale of a tough, persistent, hard-luck mouse. And in our wildly egoistic me-me bing culture I’m wondering who outside of guilty westside liberals has the patience and humility to tough it out with a sad-sack S.A. who can’t catch a break? Life keeps jabbing and slugging Bichir’s character — bitchslapping him, kicking him in the shins and delivering one form or another of trial and humiliation…but he keeps on plugging and holds onto his dignity and humanity. In the end he wins your respect and affection.

He also manages to win the respect and love of his son, who’s regarded him with mostly pity and contempt throughout most of the film. This achievement is pretty much what the film is about. Like De Sica’s film, A Better Life is not about winning or beating the system or lucking out.

Bichir (who played Fidel Castro in Steven Soderbergh‘s Che films) and Julian’s performances are as solid and open-pored as it gets. They share an emotional confession scene near the very end that pretty much ties the whole film together.

A Better Life trailer prompted an early suspicion that it was basically a white man’s (i.e., director Chris Weitz‘s) take on a Latino situation. Well, it doesn’t play that way. Yes, English is spoken but when it happens it feels right. Ethnically speaking A Better Life felt nearly as genuine and real-deal to me as Carey Fukanaga‘s Sin Nombre. The cast is almost entirely Latino, and over half of the dialogue is in Spanish, and…well, there’s just no “white guy” thing I could detect. Weitz is partly Spanish, it turns out. Maybe a Latino critic will come along and call me blind.

It’s clearly one of the truest and sturdiest films I’ve seen so far this year. It may turn out to be more of a Spirit Awards winner than an Oscar contender but let’s see where it goes.

I saw A Better Life last night at Santa Moncia’s Aero theatre, under the aegis of Pete Hammond‘s KCET screening series. Seitz and producer Christian McLaughlin answered questions following the showing.

For what it’s worth I used to work as a tree-trimmer in Los Angeles. I used to climb up palm trees with spikes and a belt chain and use pole saws and do ornamental pruning and remove dead leaders and limbs and install cables…the whole shot. It’s brutal work and it doesn’t pay all that well either, but I learned how to pull myself up with ropes and swing around with a leather saddle and a half-hitch knot and handle a chain saw and sharpen the blades with a file, etc. I could tell you stories.