Cheers to Amir Bar Lev‘s The Tillman Story for snagging the Florida Film Critics Circle’s Best Documentary award. (The San Francisco Film Critics Circle felt the same way.) Otherwise the Floridians succumbed to the same Social Network juggernaut (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay) that has swept the nation like Alexander the Great. Plus The King’s Speech‘s Colin Firth for Best Actor, Black Swan‘s Natalie Portman for Best Actress plus the Fighter twins — Christian Bale for Best Supporting Actor, Melissa Leo for Best Supporting Actress.

“The rap on Sofia Coppola‘s Somewhere is actually true,” writes Marshall Fine. “This is a film in which very little happens and very little is said. [It is] the second seriously Antonioni-esque film of this year (The American was the other) and one that is bound to divide viewers dramatically.

“Coppola’s minimalism has bothered me in the past; both The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette seemed like films in which the look, the feel and the music were more important than the characters or the story. But with Lost in Translation and now with Somewhere, she finds a way to turn that minimalism into a gift, a style that forces you to put yourself in the mind of the character, whose reaction to what he’s involved with has little to do with what he shows to the world.

“There’s a found-art quality to Somewhere, a sense that Coppola has snuck up on the best moments in the film and captured them with a camera. But it’s really a beautifully constructed venture, filled with revelations that go off in your brain like little time bombs.

“If you can swing with Coppola, if you watch the film with an understanding that it’s as much about what you don’t see as what you do, if you recognize that these are the moments that usually happen off-camera but which reveal more than what is usually shown — well, you’re in for a rich and haunting treat.”

The new Salt Unrated Edition Bluray (out tomorrow) actually contains three versions of Phillip Noyce‘s spy thriller — the original theatrical cut (95 minutes and 54 seconds), an extended version (96 minutes, 56 seconds) and a director’s cut (99 minutes and 48 seconds). The longer cuts are said to be worth the purchase price in themselves.

The extended version is the original cut before Noyce went back to shoot a new ending (Jolie leaping out of chopper, splashing to the Potomac, running into the woods, etc.) and the action scene in the middle of the film in which Salt kills her Russian mentor and his cohorts on a barge. The director’s cut is Noyce’s extended unrated version of the material that made it into the theatrical release.

The theatrical version with the re-shot ending was preferred by the studio because it left the door open for a sequel.

In his 12.17 review, Den of Geek‘s Mark Pickavance opines that the director’s cut “has significantly more balls in delivering a less-than-perfect ending. The extended cut is also interesting, because in it the death of one character, Daniel Olbrychski‘s Orlov, happens at an entirely different point, which alters things quite dramatically, and results in a totally different ending.” And that taken together, these two new versions “fix a number of plot holes that the theatrical release suffers [from].

“One question everyone I asked about the theatrical cut is why Evelyn Salt runs at the end. Well, if you watch the director’s cut you find out why, and also possibly why Orlov’s plan actually works, although it’s not the plan as presented in the theatrical version.”

Come again?

“What appears to have happened is that the studio liked the movie, but the [extended] cut doesn’t really allow for a sequel, so it got altered to make that possible,” Pikavance writes. “I won’t spoil what ultimately happens, but [in] the extended cut the death of Orlov happens at an entirely different point, which alters things quite dramatically, and results in a totally different ending.

“If you liked this movie then you’ll want to see both of those cuts, because even if the running time differences are in the region of four minutes, those are minutes that put some much needed edge on what is essentially a by-the-numbers spy thriller.”

This YouTube video (recorded by an American guy) from Japan explains some of the differences between the cuts. The extended cut is “way more interesting,” he says, than the theatrical version.

An Amazon reader’s assessment, passed along by a person close to the film and therefore presumably accurate, agrees that the director’s cut “makes the most sense plot-wise, and includes some better character development.”

Differences between the theatrical vs. director’s cut:

(1) Evelyn Salt’s opening interrogation scene in North Korea is longer and more brutal. The soldiers force a tube down her throat and subject her to more intense questioning, followed by several kicks to the abdomen.

(2) Extended scene of Orlov training little kids who will be future sleeper agents. As the kids finish a race through the woods, Orlov asks which kid was first, and which was last, whipping the last kid with a riding crop.

(3) Abduction of Michael (Salt’s husband) by Orlov’s thugs is shown.

(4) Additional scene where Michael tells Salt about a new species of spider that he has discovered.

(5) Childhood scene between Salt and [somebody] at Orlov’s training camp.

(6) Salt’s husband is not shot in the director’s cut; rather, he is slowly drowned and Salt is forced to watch. Michael’s death is much more harrowing in the director’s cut.

(7) Salt kills Orlov with a broken bottle, and the stabbing is shown in more detail, rather than off-screen.

(8) Salt’s rampage through Orlov’s freighter headquarters is more graphic.

(9) Gunfights depict more bullet holes and blood, but nothing overly gory.

(10) Liev Schreiber‘s Winter kills the president in the director’s cut, whereas in the theatrical cut, Winter only knocks him unconscious. Some have noted that the theatrical cut never made much sense, because the President would easily be able to identify Winter as the traitor.

(11) At the end of the movie, there is a voiceover that subtly suggests that the vice president is actually one of Orlov’s sleeper agents, setting the stage up for a sequel. This voiceover is not present in the extended cut.

Differences between the extended cut vs. director’s cut:

(1) The changes listed above in the director’s cut are also done in the Extended Cut, with the exception of the differences below.

2) The President is only knocked unconscious in the theatrical cut (and killed in the director’s cut). In the extended cut, Winter attempts to make his way towards the unconscious President, who is being wheeled away on a stretcher, in order to kill him.

3) The biggest difference in the extended cut is that Salt doesn’t kill Orlov until the end of the movie. So the entire sequence in the theatrical and director’s cuts where Salt annihilates Orlov’s thugs on the barge is missing.

At the end of the extended cut, she is being interrogated by Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), where she fakes suicide and is taken to a hospital. She subsequently escapes from the hospital, finds Orlov (back in Russia somewhere), and kills him.

Last Friday I wrote that the existence of those 17 minutes of cut footage from 2001: A Space Odyssey, sitting in a vault in Hutchinson, Kansas, has been known to Warner Bros. for the last 42 years, and is therefore no discovery, and that re-integrating the footage into the standard 139 minute cut that’s everyone’s familiar with would probably be a bad idea.

This morning a statement from Warner Bros. arrived: “The additional footage from 2001: A Space Odyssey has always existed in the Warner vaults. When [director Stanley] Kubrick trimmed the 17 minutes from 2001 after the NY premiere, he made it clear the shortened version was his final edit. The film is as he wanted it to be presented and preserved and Warner Home Video has no plans to expand or revise Mr. Kubrick’s vision.”

Okay, fine…but what about including the unseen footage being included on an extras menu on a subsequent Bluray down the line? Where would be the harm?

The Museum of Modern Art’s Bernardo Bertolucci restrospective kicked off 12.15, and runs until 1.12.11. (I’ll be revisiting La Luna, 1900 and The Spider’s Stratagem, and catching Serge July and Bruno Nuytten‘s Once Upon a Time: Last Tango in Paris, a doc about the landmark Marlon Brando-Maria Schneider film showing on 12.27). Bertolucci’s The Conformist has four days left at the Film Forum. And a new Bluray of Last Tango in Paris streets on 2.15.

For me, getting lost in Bertolucci will be a way of combating Christmas-holiday gloom. It’s the holiday per se, but the fact that almost everything shuts down and nothing’s doing for about a ten-day period (12.23 to 1.3). I always get through it okay, but God, what a relief when things finally start up again.

Here’s a Hollywood Reporter interview with Bertolucci about the MOMA thing. And here’s a personal story about Bertolucci in Bilge Ebiri‘s blog as well as a “Vulture” slideshow in which Bertolucci discusses certain key scenes from his films.

If Todd McCarthy is ripping Little Fockers (Universal, 12.22) a new one (“focking dismal…nothing but a paycheck project”), so can I. This is a franchise-killer for the simple reason that it’s just not funny. To watch it is to slowly succumb to a kind of corporate poison that spreads through your veins like embalming fluid, causing your skin and your soul to turn gray. Never again will I watch a Focker film…ever. It’s not family fun. It’s not some kind of half-okay Christmas hoot. It’s narcotized horseshit.

Robert De Niro getting buried under a truckful of sand isn’t funny. DeNiro with a raging hard-on isn’t funny. Ben Stiller stabbing his father-in-law’s erect member like he’s Norman Bates killing Marion Crane isn’t funny. Intra-family insinuations and putdowns and one-upsmanship about a lack of money or generosity or potency are not funny. Stiller slicing his hand with a carving knife and splattering at least a half-pint of blood all over his wife (Teri Polo) and parents-in-law (De Niro, Blythe Danner) is not funny. A film that won’t stop smothering its audience with images of affluent comfort and abundance is about as funny as George Orwell‘s Big Brother. And on and on. You get the idea.

“This is definitely the least and hopefully the last of a franchise that started amusingly enough a decade ago but has now officially overstayed its welcome,” McCarthy writes. “Still, this won’t stop quite a few folks from parting with some bucks in search of some holiday season yucks, the majority of them from jokes that could have originated on men’s room walls.”

Today’s Oscar Poker (#12) included credentialed-pally critic Marshall Fine along with boxoffice.com‘s Phil Contrino. Tron: Legacy did okay but How Do You Know (“Sold as a comedy, not a comedy!”) was DOA. Black Swan and The Fighter did pretty well, but what about poor Rabbit Hole? And what about that curious Kids Are All Right love from the New York Film Critics? Do GenY filmgoers have the ability to appreciate films like Somewhere? Here’s a non-iTunes link.

At the very least, Water for Elephants (20th Century Fox, 4.15.11) has been handsomely shot by Rodrigo Prieto (Brokeback Mountain, Babel, Biutiful). That seems fairly evident. A young man falls in love with a blonde under the big top, etc. Period trappings, heart, amber, romantic conflict, refuge of the road. Director Francis Lawrence previously made I Am Legend, which wasn’t half bad.

I have a slight Out of Sight problem. I can’t remember much of the basic story, only story pieces. George Clooney goes back to jail at the end but he meets an expert jail-breaker in the paddy wagon — I remember that. And Clooney and Jennifer Lopez talking and half-flirting in the car trunk, and talking at one point about Robert Redford “when he was young.” I remember Michael Keaton‘s not very bright FBI agent, Ray Nicollette. And a fat criminal falling on the stairs and accidentally shooting himself.

I remember Dennis Farina‘s character, a lawman who’s Lopez’s dad, noticing that Keaton is wearing a T-shirt that says “FBI” on the front and saying “Hey, Ray, do you ever wear one that says ‘undercover’?”

Except the Bluray doesn’t even come out until March 1st. That kinda sucks.

Out of Sight was released 12 years ago. Time flies. Clooney looks young with the bop haircut and all.

Clooney: “I know a guy who walks into a bank with a little glass bottle. He tells everyone it’s nitroglycerine. He scores some money off the teller, walks out. On his way out, the bottle breaks, he slips on it and knocks himself out. The ‘nitro’ was Canola oil. I know more fucked-up bank robbers than ones who know what they’re doing. I doubt if one in twenty could tell you where the dye pack is. Most bank robbers are fucking morons.”

The Detroit Flm Critics got it right when they defied conventional wisdom by giving The Fighter‘s Amy Adams their Best Supporting Actress prize, and not her costar Melissa Leo, whom everyone else has cited. I love Leo personally, and if she wins the Oscar, fine. But she’s playing a momma monster who grates a bit with a second viewing, and who turns rancid when you catch The Fighter a third time.

It’s not just the performance that people vote for; it’s also the character. Do you feel this person has been written and portrayed in a filled-out, real-enough way? They may be flawed, perhaps tragically so, but do their actions square with your understanding of what people are like and how the world is? Or do they seem alien and/or repellent? Would you like this person or want them for an acquaintance or friend if you met them in real life? These are questions that people kick around.

Fair warning to spoiler whiners: Leo’s braying, chain-smoking mom looks again and again into the damaged life of her ex-boxer son Dicky’ (Christian Bale), sees him jumping out of the second-floor window of the crack house he lives in, mentally realizes he’s an addict, and yet emotionally pushes it aside, refusing to actively deal with it (by urging rehab, say) and she still favors him over her other non-addicted son, Mickey (Mark Wahlberg). This is how parents are, I know. They have favorites. But still…

Leo sees nothing other than “family, family, family” as the cornerstone of her life and her son’s boxing career, and yet it’s obvious that to her “family, family, family” means “me, me, me” in terms of holding onto power and pushing and coddling Dicky to the point of absurd and ridiculous denial. What is that scene when she’s watching the HBO special and she says to Wahlberg, “Are you watchin’ this?” She didn’t get what was going on with Dicky because she didn’t want to get it, because Dicky had to be the champ and the big brother who ruled the roost…Dicky, Dicky, DIcky.

Amy Adams walks into Wahlberg’s life, takes one look around and said, “What the fuck is this? Your career is on the verge of going down the toilet because your older brother is a junkbag and they’re putting you into fights that you shouldn’t be fighting.” This, of course, is what the audience has been thinking almost since the film started. They’re also asking themselves, “What is Melissa Leo’s blockage?” We get it, Amy Adams gets it and Leo refuses to until the HBO show comes on, and even then she favors Dicky. She’s a textbook example of a malevolent mother.

That’s why Adams should win the nomination and the Oscar, I feel, because she’s easily as good as Leo, chops-wise, and just as strong and scrappy as Leo’s character, only you can really identify with and believe in Adams while Leo’s mom is just, like, “forget it.” The more I think about her, the more repellent she seems.

I requested, received and read Wes Jones‘ College Republicans yesterday, and the thumbs-up consensus is absolutely correct. This is a very smartly written, character-rich, darkly humorous tale of an actual 1973 road trip taken by infamous Bush strategist and Fox News scumbag Karl Rove, then 23, and the late Republican attack dog Lee Atwater, then 22, as they campaigned and dirty-tricked their way across the south in order to get Rove elected chairman of the College Republican National Committee.

(l. to. r.) young Karl Rove, Shia LaBeouf, the late Lee Atwater, Paul Dano.

But what this is, boiled down, is another Due Date mixed with politics and, in a manner of speaking, horror. Because it’s an origin story about the wily and colorful beginnings of two scoundrels who made their bones as the architects of rightwing attack-and-subvert politics — guys who not only put two Bushes into the White House but injected a vicious and reprehensible strain into American politics that not only thrives today but has in fact metastasized.

And yet it’s funny and entertaining, and the Atwater character is a likable good-old-boy, part snake and part horndog, and Rove is a brilliant but snarly schemer who believes in Machiavelli and getting revenge. And it’s got rowdy episodes and wild shenanigans (sexual seduction, colorful language, sudden fisticuffs, rummaging through garbage cans, being chased by dogs and cops and hopping over fences) and a scrappy and suspenseful third-act climax that works in the same way that hundreds of other films have worked — i.e., everything comes to a head and the characters fulfill their fate.

Do I have to say it? Material of this sort is right up the alley of director Todd Phillips (Due Date, The Hangover, Road Trip), and yet the largely fact-based, dark-political-metaphor aspect would expand Phillips’ resume. Anonymous Content, the project’s producers, doesn’t need to be told this. It’s a no-brainer.

But in his 12.17 review piece, L.A. Times guy Steven Zeitchick has apparently heard the wrong information about who might potentially play Rove and Atwater. He reports that Anonymous wants Shia LaBeouf to portray Atwater and Paul Dano to inhabit Rove. And that can’t be. If anything, it’s gotta be LaBeouf as Rove and Dano as Atwater. Zeitchik’s casting doesn’t allow for the slightest physical resemblance between the actors and the real guys, but you could easily imagine the opposite.

And if they can’t get LaBeouf, fine. Because Emile Hirsch would have a total field day as Rove. He’s not as commercial as LaBeouf, agreed, but he’d knock it out of the park. And it’s really too bad Seth Rogen looks so much older than he is (born in 1982, doesn’t appear a day under 38) because he’d also be awesome as the future Bushian power-broker. But there’s no way audiences could buy him as a 23 year-old.

Zeitchik goes off on a weird tangent when he calls College Republicans “a tricky commercial prospect…the stuff of great drama but not necessarily great box office [because] it’s far from a sure thing that the large number of Americans who consider themselves Republicans would embrace a Hollywood take on Karl Rove.”

Zeitchik is serious? Firstly, College Republicans is a story about a couple of smart (if slightly satanic) young guys on the make who take down their enemies and attain power, and if that’s not an American success story then I don’t know what is. Secondly, take out the comic schtick and some of the antics and the story is essentially truthful. (Most of it is recounted in James Moore and Wayne Slater‘s “Rove Exposed: How Bush’s Brain Fooled America.”) And thirdly, the only Republicans who know or care about Rove these days are over 55 and live in the hinterlands. Rove is a back-room guy who’s not at all liked, I’ve read, by Sarah Palin or the Tea Party-ers, and while he’s a Fox News commentator he clearly lacks the bully-boy charisma and popularity of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh. And — hello? — Rove is generally regarded as a demonic figure who operated the marionette strings of George Bush, swift-boated John Kerry, was involved in outing Valerie Plame, mis-advised Bush on Hurricane Katrina, etc. If you can’t portray or satirize a guy like Rove in a darkly humorous way, who can you stick it to?

Here I am the last to speak up, but after reading Stephen Zeitchik‘s 12.17 L.A. Times piece about Wes Jones‘ College Republicans, I’m intrigued. If any HE script pallies have a PDF, please send along. College Republicans was recently praised as the most popular of the hot newbie scripts by Franklin Leonard, the creator-manager of the Black List.

Leonard has placed Noah Oppenheim‘s Jackie in second place, right behind College Republicans, as the second most admired Black Lister with 47 votes. I beg to differ, as I explained on 4.15.10.

Incidentally: I also wouldn’t mind snagging a copy of Carrie Evans and Emi Mochizuki‘s Boy Scouts and Zombies.

Note: My apologies to HE commenters, but I was obliged to delete and repost this story, which originally ran Saturday morning, due to a ridiculous server clock/time stamp issue created by the geniuses at Softlayer/Orbit the Planet, which is HE’s internet service provider for the time being. As a result (and I really couldn’t help this) all of yesterday’s comments were wiped out