I woke up this morning at 8 am Paris time (i.e, 2 am Eastern) and then woke again at 5 am, or 11 am in Paris. The wifi is working perfectly in the place I’m staying in…very nice. And it rained this morning around 6 am. No screenings today because of Memorial Day. Jesus…Memorial Day. Every time it comes around I feel listless and conflicted.

It’s been over 65 years since Americans fought and won an unambiguously “good” war. I know i’ll never stop feeling sickened by the thought of over 58,000 guys having died in the Vietnam War. And I don’t feel much pride or see a whole lot of value in the death tallies from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

So it’s a holiday about despair, really. Despair and mixed feelings and, okay, little sprigs of pride. But I hate it when someone says “he gave his life for his country.” No soldier selflessly gives his life for his country. He’s in the wrong place at the wrong time and he gets shot or shrapnelled or blown up or burned to death, period. My old man, a Marine lieutenant who fought in the Pacific, carried a certain pride about having done his duty and risked death and helped defeat the Japanese. But he was mostly appalled and disgusted by what he experienced.

In the words of Paddy Chayefsky‘s Charlie Madison: “I don’t trust people who make bitter reflections about war. It’s always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a Hell it is. And it’s always the widows who lead the Memorial Day parades.

“We shall never end wars by blaming it on ministers and generals or warmongering imperialists or all the other banal bogies. It’s the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers; the rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields.

“We wear our widows’ weeds like nuns and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices.

“War isn’t hell at all. It’s man at his best; the highest morality he’s capable of. It’s not war that’s insane, you see. It’s the morality of it. It’s not greed or ambition that makes war: it’s goodness. Wars are always fought for the best of reasons: for liberation or manifest destiny. Always against tyranny and always in the interest of humanity. So far this war, we’ve managed to butcher some ten million humans in the interest of humanity. It’s not war that’s unnatural to us — it’s virtue. As long as valor remains a virtue, we shall have soldiers.

“My brother died at Anzio – an everyday soldier’s death, no special heroism involved. They buried what pieces they found of him. But my mother insists he died a brave death and pretends to be very proud. Now my other brother can’t wait to reach enlistment age. That’ll be in September. It may be ministers and generals who blunder us into wars, but the least the rest of us can do is to resist honoring the institution.

“What has my mother got for pretending bravery was admirable? She’s under constant sedation and terrified she may wake up one morning and find her last son has run off to be brave.”

How much of a Bluray marketing genius do you have to be to not know that the photo of Paul Newman on the new Bluray of The Hustler is from The Young Philadelphians (’59)? And if the Fox Home Video marketing ace who chose this photo did know of its origin, why did he/she use it?

Any fan of The Hustler (’61) would spot the error in two seconds and be mildly irked by it, as I was when I bought this sucker last night at Kim’s Video. And any fan of The Young Philadelphians, a John O’Hara-styled soap opera, probably wouldn’t care for the grit and realism of The Hustler or would be too dumb to notice what I’m talking about in the first place.

The 33 year-old Newman looks preppy and straight-laced with neat, cleanly-parted hair in the Philadelphians photo. And he looks a tiny bit younger and smoother than he does in The Hustler, in which his hair is wiry and curly and his manner and expressions are mainly about anxiety and uncertainty — definitely a different emotional package. (The Hustler was shot in the fall of ’60, when Newman was 35, and opened in September ’61.)

It’s just a stupid-ass movie to use the Philadelphians pic. While the Fox Home Video brain surgeons were at it why didn’t they use a still of Newman from The Silver Chalice, with his Roman curls? Why not a still from The Outrage, for which Newman wore dark face makeup so he’d look like a Mexican? If you don’t care about being true to the source then why not? Go to town. Create your own Hustler mythology.

A DVD Beaver frame capture from The Young Philadelphians.

(l.) Newman’s Eddie Felson in The Hustler; (r.) Newman as Anthony Lawrence in The Young Philadelphians.

The only Nazi fascist-perversion films of the ’70s that I could stand watching weren’t exploitation fare — Liliana Cavani‘s The Night Porter and Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s Salo. A couple of times I’ve felt a slight urge to see Tinto Brass‘s Salon Kitty (which is now out on Bluray) but I can’t make myself rent it. I just can’t. I keep hearing Peter O’Toole calling this Italian schlockmeister, with whom he worked on Caligula, “Tinto Zinc.”

It’s been a bit more than a year since I saw Radu Muntean‘s Tuesday, After Christmas at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. And now, at long last, it’s playing at Manhattan’s Film Forum until June 7th. It’s another one of those plain but gradually penetrating, long-take Romanian films in the tradition of Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days and The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, which I can’t get enough of.

I love the slow studied atmosphere of these films, and their very subtle pay-offs that seem to strengthen and deepen the more you think about them afterwards. They’re pretty much essential viewing, even when they’re not totally top-of-the-line.

Tuesday, After Christmas doesn’t have quite the undertow or the sink-in quality of 4, 3, 2 but it’ll certainly do for now.

It’s about a paunchy, mild-mannered Romanian husband and father (Mimi Branescu) who’s not only having a prolonged affair with his daughter’s dentist (Maria Popistasu) but has fallen in love with her. On one level the film seems to be about the banality of family life with a threatening undercurrent that doesn’t seem to be growing…and yet it is. The fireworks finally happen when this nice, sensitive philanderer summons the courage to tell his wife Adriana (Mirela Opri?or). Their confrontation scene is so realistic and riveting that I’m thinking of catching Christmas again when I return to Manhattan. (I’ll be there early this evening.)

Here’s an excellent review from Salon‘s Andrew O’Hehir.

The Air France flight to JFK leaves at 4:30 this afternoon, and arrives at 6:20 pm. It’s time to get back into the stateside swing. Several LA screenings and the LA Film Festival, etc. A Super 8 press junket next weekend. I’m returning with an idea that I have to somehow find an affordable scooter that isn’t too dinky-looking. Buzzing around Paris reminded me of the necessity. Scooters are the only way to push through heavy traffic, and LA is the king of that.

I bought tickets incidetnally, to today’s performance of Carey Mulligan‘s Though A Glass Darkly in Manhattan, thinking I could just make an 8 pm curtain. Then I was told it only performs today at 3 pm, and Monday is dark and I’m back to LA on Tuesday. So Jett and Dylan are going today instead; I’ve asked for quickie reviews from each.

Here’s a hand-held, poor-quality video of the European redband trailer for David Fincher‘s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. “The Feel-Bad Movie of Christmas”! Love that Zeppelin.

Roger Ebert has derided The Hangover, Part II for using perhaps the famous Vietnam War photograph ever — a capturing of a South Vietnamese military guy shooting a Vietcong guy in the head — for laughs. He called its appearance during the still-photo section at the end “a desecration.” But Ebert didn’t complain about Woody Allen‘s using the same photo for satiric purposes in Stardust Memories .

Allen’s character, a distracted film director, has a huge blowup of this photo in his living room in the film. It’s obviously a much smarter and more satiric use of the photo but it’s definitely meant to provoke and amuse.

If it’s okay for Allen to go there, you can’t fault Phillips for replicating the same photo, etc. Once a news artifact has been used in a comic-satric context, the toothpaste is out of the tube. Phillips imitated the shot to get an “oh, yeah” reaction from the audience, and Allen used the shot to say to the audience, “Look at how self-absorbed and angsty my character is.” Allen’s humor is on a much higher plane but he and Phillips basically did the same thing.

Couldn’t someone have claimed 40 years ago that Stanley Kubrick‘s using news footage of Nazi soldiers goose-stepping to the rhythm of Beethoven’s 9th in A Clockwork Orange was also a desecration?

So Ebert isn’t complaining about the photo per se being used for comic purposes — he’s complaining about the vulgarity and the coarseness of Phillips’ intent. Which most of us agree with. Phillips is shovelling mulch in this film. But I will defend to the death his right to use that photo for a laugh or whatever. Because he was only following Allen’s lead.

I’ve said two or three times that I don’t have to equate Lindsay Lohan with arrogant entitlement attitudes and self-destruction and drugs, etc. It was clear in Prairie Home Companion that she’s got that X-factor sparked, and it’s easy to believe that she leads a passionate life in all respects. She’s defintely interesting to stare at and contemplate. But until she does something besides go to court and listen to admonishments from judges then I don’t know what.

This video is supposed to invoke Brigitte Bardot and/or Liv Ullman. I would buy LiLo in a remake of Jean-Luc Godard‘s Contempt. I would buy her in a lot of things. She might yet have a chance to act in good films. But now and for the rest of her life she has to stop appearing in crap like Underground Comedy and I Know Who Killed Me and Machete and that whole cheeseball wink-wink thing. She has to go upscale and austere and…I don’t know, get married? Support a cause of some kind? Have a kid?

It suddenly turned cool yesterday. Late May into early to mid October. Jackets, sweaters, scarves. I was hoping that those dark clouds might lead to something because when Paris lets go with a good rainstorm things can get very torrential.

Good clouds facing sixth-floor loft at 9 rue Gassendi — Friday, 5.27, 4:10 pm.

There’s excellent wifi throughout the entire underground Paris metro system.

Joseph Gordon Levitt‘s 50/50 character has cancer, which means if he gets into the usual chemo and radiation he’ll be losing his hair. So…he decides to get a Full Metal Jacket Parris Island buzzcut so he won’t have to deal with it falling out in strands and clumps? I admire the brashness behind making a film with this kind of story, but this bit feels like a resignation.

It seems a fairly safe bet that 50/50 not My Life with Michael Keaton.

The pre-trailer intro explains that the story is based somewhat on the experiences of screenwriter Will Reiser (i.e., the little guy standing between costar-producer Seth Rogen and John Candy-sized producer Evan Goldberg).

The Summit marketing people are, of course, white-knuckle terrified about this thing, and about taking the blame if it under-performs or bombs. “You acquired the damn thing…it’s your fault!” “No, it’s yours…your marketing instincts are pathetic!” “Fuck you!” “No, fuck you!”

I’m With Cancer is a brave and rather cool title. Live With It is on the dull and depressing side. Filming ended in March 2010. It was probably finished in August 2010. So they’ve probably been test-screening it and biting their nails and pacing the boardroom for the last nine months. Hommina-hommina-hommina.

For me the funniest part of Todd Phillips‘ The Hangover was the photo sequence at the very end. That’s because it (a) revealed what had specifically gone down during the blind-drunk debauchery in Las Vegas, which looked funny, and (b) let us imagine the minute-to-minute action that happened before and after the snapping of each still. Nothing the movie depicted could match our imaginations in this regard.

It’s the exact same deal with The Hangover, Part II, which I saw this evening at the Pathe Wepler at Place Clichy. The insanity-depicting series of photos at the very end are way funnier than anything in the film itself. Except that’s damnation with faint praise because none of the acted-out material in this Godforsaken sequel is funny. Nothing. I sat there like a tombstone through the whole thing. But the photo montage is cool. It didn’t make me laugh but I smiled a bit.

Imagining funny stuff is always…okay, often funnier than showing it. An example I’ve used before is the starving lion and the tail sandwich. A lion who’s dying for a meal is chasing a monkey around the jungle so he can eat him. Somehow there’s a lull and the monkey sneaks up beside the lion and puts the lion’s tail between two slices of bread and hands it to him. Scenario #1 shows the lion eagerly biting into the sandwich and roaring from the pain and chasing the monkey again. Not terribly funny. Scenario #2 shows the monkey handing the sandwich to the lion and then creeping away and hiding behind a tree, and after two or three seconds we hear the lion roar. Funny as hell.

The Hangover, Part II shows the lion biting into the tail and roaring really loudly and then pissing into somebody’s half-filled beer glass and then screaming “wait, what’s happening?” and then shouting “Teddy! Teddy! Where are you, Teddy?”

It’s not funny to repeat the same bits and jokes from the first film. Massive amounts of production funds are never funny, and wasting dough on a project like this is double-unfunny. Bradley Cooper isn’t funny. Ed Helms was funny in The Hangover but not here. It’s not funny when Zach Galifianakis‘s moronic man-child drives a speed boat up onto a beach at full throttle. In fact, it’s not funny to watch Galifianakis do or say anything in this film. Ken Jeong‘s cashew-sized penis isn’t funny. It’s not funny to see Paul Giamatti, who needs to grow some hair so he can return to his Miles look in Sideways, with a shaved head-top. (And looking fat.) Bangkok, which looks like a cesspool-choked combination of Jersey City, Newark and Dubai with a big canal running through it, is a deeply unfunny place. The whole film is about as funny as a preferred stock offering.