I first saw the extended director’s cut of The Exorcist a few years ago on DVD, and again last week at the Museum of Modern Art. I still prefer the original theatrical cut. Tighter, subtler, a little more concise. It was this version that I popped into the player yesterday when the new Exorcist Bluray arrived. My favorite bit in the whole film is that eerie whoosh-slingshot sound coming from the attic. The scariest stuff is always about suggestion.

Wells: That’s cool about Tom Hanks talking to you guys about starring in Sleeping Dogs. Can you tell me non-attrib who or what Hanks will play? He’s…what, some kind of law enforcement guy? Can you give me the rundown?

Sleeping Dogs guy: I can’t right now, but when I can share I’ll get back to you.

Wells: Not even a generic boilerplate description? Does he play a good guy or a bad guy?

Sleeping Dogs guy: I’m sorry, but you know how this goes. I just can’t say anything.

Wells: I’m going to assume he’s not playing a drug kingpin with a Latin accent and a twirly moustache. I’m going to assume that he plays ‘Tom Hanks,’ just like he does in every other film.

Sleeping Dogs guy: You can assume what you want, but I’m not going to say what you want me to say.

Wells: “Go ahead, try and make me say ‘Niagara Falls!’

Sleeping Dogs guy: “Niagara Falls! Slooooowly I crept, step by step, inch by inch…”

Wells: Who came up with the title Sleeping Dogs?

Sleeping Dogs guy: Why, whadaya mean?

Wells: Nothing. I mean, I like the title. I do. It’s a little bit better than Triple Frontier. Well, somewhat. I’m just remembering a story from the late ’70s about Karel Reicz‘s Who’ll Stop The Rain…

Sleeping Dogs guy: Yeah?

Wells: Which was originally called Dog Soldiers, based on the Robert Stone novel, and the reason they changed the title, I read, is that they did a marketing survey and women, they found out, don’t like titles with the word “dog” in it. No dogs. Dog, death. I guess…whatever, they think the word suggests something smelly and male and drooling with saliva.

Sleeping Dogs guy: But this is an expression, obviously. A saying that everyone knows the meaning of — “Let sleeping dogs lie.”

Wells: All right, cool with me, whatever. I’m just saying you can’t mess with women when it comes to movie marketing. If they don’t want to see something, you can’t stop them.

Yesterday Alison Willmore posted a smart, incisive reply to feminist Social Network haters on IFC.com. The film “doesn’t present a world in which women are ‘all gold-diggers, drunken floozies and that ‘bitch’ who got away,” she wrote. “It presents one in which [the] main characters do everything possible to meet girls except actually go out and meet them.

“That ridiculous party that’s juxtaposed with Mark’s assembling of Facemash.com isn’t meant to be a feasible depiction of what life in the final clubs is like — the members order in kegs of beer and kegs of ladies. It stands for everything Mark thinks he’s missing out on, the debaucherous good time the elite are surely having while he sits at home stewing in his own self-loathing. What would he even do if he was invited? He’d just sit in the corner with his laptop.

“Mark Zuckerberg, or at least the Mark Zuckerberg of the movie, embodied by Jesse Eisenberg, finds the seeds of his company in the type of obscurely vengeful thought we’ve all found consolation in at one time or another — ‘You’ll be sorry when I’m famous/dead/beautiful/successful/rich!” What’s tragic about Zuckerberg is that even as he builds the company that will become a part of the lives of half a billion people, that will make him the world’s youngest billionaire, he’s still just a closed-off workaholic who has trouble relating to people, and his ex isn’t going to come crawling back because of his achievements.

“We don’t see women around much in general in the film because our main characters have no idea how to meet or pursue or talk to them. The smart, grounded girl the film starts out with — Rooney Mara‘s Erica Albright — walks out on the asshole she’s been dating after he simultaneously ignores and talks down to her. It’s an affirming moment, but we don’t go with her, because it’s the asshole that The Social Network is about.”

In his 10.6 review of Charles Ferguson‘s Inside Job (Sony Classics, 10.8), Marshall Fine says this brilliant, diamond-hard doc “should be required viewing for all citizens. Instead, it’s destined to be one of those movies that critics rave about and people who already know this material go to see. But it should be shown in every college and high school, in all the economics, civics or social studies classes in America.”

In my review from the Cannes Film Festival, I said that “every Average Joe and tea-bagger needs to see this film at least twice and take notes each time. (Or at least read the press notes.) Will they? Of course not. Inside Job will only play to the educated liberal urbans — the only social class that’s even half-inclined to spend ticket money on documentaries.

“The American public was — hello? — robbed blind and is still being made to suffer by an arrogant den of thieves, and the enormity of their power-corridor hustle is almost too vast and labrynthian to comprehend. But Ferguson’s doc makes it more comprehensible than in any presentation I’ve seen thus far.

Inside Job “delivers a clear, razor-sharp portrait of a gang of blue-chip ogres and world-class motherfuckers (Summers, Paulson, Greenspan, Geithner, etc.), starting with their initial unleashing during the Reagan-era deregulating and moving through a litany of Bush 41, Clinton and Bush 43 sign-offs, conflict-of-interest corruptions, revolving-door deals and mutually beneficial handjobs.

“Too many billions were available, they all got greedy and created games and schemes in order to line their pockets, and here we are. And Barack Obama hasn’t done jack about restraining this culture since taking office.”

Fine agrees and reviews the basics: “If the financial crisis of 2008 has shown anything, it’s that deregulation — a free-market idea championed by Republicans and Democrats alike — has exactly the opposite effect of what is promised.

“Ultimately, it also proves the primitively atavistic nature of human beings: that altruism is an unnatural societal construct and that self-interest is the natural impulse of the human animal. Take away the rules and, rather than benefiting everyone, it benefits only those in the position to exercise power.

“It’s like the long-refuted notion of trickle-down economics: Given the opportunity to keep more of their money instead of paying taxes, corporations and businessmen don’t use that money to create jobs and send more money downward to those in the lower-income brackets. No, they follow human nature and hoard as much for themselves as possible.”

A time-pressure element has obviously been built into Paul Haggis‘s The Next Three Days, but this remake of Pour Elle is primarily about a husband (Russell Crowe) busting his wife (Elizabeth Banks), wrongly convicted of murder, out of jail. So what’s the hurry? She’s not about to be executed like Grace Kelly in Dial M for Murder. She’s in stir so what difference does it make if you bust her out this weekend or three weeks from now or whatever?

I’m saying that I smell the scent of un-grounded artificial tension built into the story if the breakout has to happen with 72 hours. Take it easy, be careful, don’t rush, knock back some brewskis, go to the football game on Sunday, etc. A jail break is not easy. My favorite was when Robert Redford and pals busted out their pal Greenberg in Peter Yates‘ The Hot Rock ; my runner-up is the organized jailbreak in John Huston ‘s The Macintosh Man, when they air-lifted Paul Newman over the wall with a crane and a net.

Darren Aronofsky has as much right to grab a creative paycheck gig as Chris Nolan or anyone else on that level. He’s one of the very few helmers who can take an over-and-done-with superhero franchise like Wolverine — Jesus! — and make it work. He can bestow integrity. But at the same time there’s something odious about corporate Hollywood responding to the artistry of Aronofsky’s Black Swan by saying, “Wow, great flick…would you take a shot at reviving a ruined pop-trash superhero franchise if we pay you enough?”

I said roughly the same thing on 9.29 when it was being reported that Aronofsky was in discussions with Chris Nolan about directing the Superman reboot.

Tim Gunn‘s message about how “it gets better” for anguished gay, lesbian, transgender or conflicted youth applies to any kid who feels suppressed and despairing. I was one of the most miserable kids on the planet in my mid teens (constant criticism and belitting, powerless, alcoholic household) but it got better for me. I also love Gunn, a renowned fashion critic/personality, for having said “the Kardashians have an absence of taste and I don’t think that that should be perpetuated.”

In a 10.5 Slate piece about the screwy-monkey working habits of Tree of Life helmer Terrence Malick (which must be the sixth or or seventh article in journalistic history to be titled “Absence of Malick”), Jessica Winters notes that “genius filmmakers are allowed to improvise, request supernatural feats from their staff, waste time and money, and generally behave in an inscrutable manner befitting their ineffable gifts.”

Malick, however, is a species unto himself. Here’s a portion of the piece, which mainly focuses on the making of Malick’s The Thin Red Line:

“It seems to me that Terry does so much of his work in the editing room,” explains production designer Jack Fisk on the Thin Red Line Bluray commentary. But there, too, Malick works in mysterious ways. According to one of film’s three editors, Billy Weber, Malick saw a full version of the film exactly once: a five-hour work print assembled during the 18-month-long post-production process, and screened for him under some duress. (‘We forced him to watch,’ Weber says in an interview.)

“Otherwise, Malick edited by watching one reel at a time, with the sound off, while listening to a Green Day CD. If he missed any dialogue, it stayed in; if he didn’t, it would likely be supplanted by music or voiceover. ‘I don’t think he was capable of seeing the movie as a whole during the process,’ co-editor Leslie Jones says evenly. ‘…That was a big adjustment.’

“It’s an adjustment for viewers, too, especially for that fervent cult of fans who have psychoanalyzed, memorized, and immersed themselves in The Thin Red Line over the years. (Among the men in my family, Nick Nolte‘s volatile Col. Tall is as eminently quotable as Jeff Lebowski.) It’s startling to find out that this same obsession-worthy film is not one that its director could find cause to watch in full or to edit with the sound on.

“Still, Malick doesn’t fit into our established category for cinema’s pure artists, who tend to fall somewhere on the control-freak spectrum — think of David Fincher asking for 100 takes of a scene or Martin Scorsese knotting the gangsters’ ties himself on the set of GoodFellas. Malick seems to be a different animal: unavailable, cryptic, indecisive, evasive, there-but-not-there. (His self-effacement may extend beyond a simple aversion to interviews.) To judge from the admiring but bemused conversations with his cast and crew, Malick is less like a conductor and more like a muse, perhaps, or an elusive father figure, or a benign god in whom an apostle can have faith but nothing so presumptuous as understanding.

“What emerges isn’t a group of people striving to fulfill an artist’s vision, but rather striving to figure out what that vision might be.”

I got into a spirited discussion with Scott Feinberg during last night’s after-party for Sony Classics’ Made in Dangenham, a tidy but stirring rabble-rouser about an equal-pay-for-women strike at a London-area Ford plant in the late ’60s. The subject was The Kids Are All Right and what Focus may be planning to re-energize things for the film and for Annette Bening‘s Best Actress shot in particular.

Bening is facing tough competition from Black Swan‘s Natalie Portman, Another Year‘s Leslie Manville and Winter’s Bone Jennifer Lawrence, to name but three. But in a sense Feinberg is lobbying for an even tougher scenario with yet another competitor, Bening’s costar Julianne Moore, being nominated as well. Feinberg was basically asking why and how Moore has been “thrown under the bus” despite her having the larger and more assertive role in The Kids Are All Right, and having been overlooked or dissed in more award races than Annette.

I for one don’t believe that Bening and Moore have a prayer of being nominated together, and that it would certainly kill the chances of either one winning due to a vote split. Does Moore deserve to be the nominee more than Bening? Perhaps, but whaddaya gonna do? I sound like a go-alonger, right? Feinberg sure doesn’t.

Here’s what he wrote on 7.25 and 8.7, and here’s his latest rant on the subject, posted earlier today.

“Some people are adamant that Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, the co-leads of The Kids Are All Right, cannot both be nominated for the best actress Oscar this year,” Feinberg writes. “That’s a bunch of malarkey. Not only can they, and not only should they, but — if Focus genuinely fights the good fight for both of them, as studio insiders emphatically insist to me that they will — they will be.

“Those who say that it cannot happen point to the large number of quality contenders in the category this year and insist that there isn’t room for two people from the same film. I disagree. Bening and Moore are together in virtually every scene of the film (Moore actually has a few more scenes, alongside Mark Ruffalo). Both actresses have some terrific moments in the film (Bening’s return to the dinner table after discovering Moore was having an affair and Moore’s subsequent soliloquy on the challenges of marriage are both showstoppers). And both are highly-respected by their peers, who have never been shy about nominating them before (the Academy has recognized Bening with three nods and Moore with four, and neither has won yet).

“Some people are pushing the line that Bening has a leg up on Moore because she’s ‘Hollywood royalty‘ (as if people are going to vote for her because she married Warren Beatty) and because she’s made the right friends (she’s a longtime member of the Academy’s Board of Governors), but for all of the aforementioned reasons I simply cannot see a voter sitting down and voting to nominate one but not the other.

“As I first wrote back on July 25, the Academy has nominated two best actress nominees from the same film in five of the 82 years (6% of the time) in which the category has existed: (a) Anne Baxter and Bette Davis for All About Eve (1950); (b) Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor for Suddenly, Last Summer (1959); (c) Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine for The Turning Point (1977); Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger for Terms of Endearment (1983); and Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon for Thelma and Louise (1991).”

I was late to Mike Leigh‘s Another Year, missing showings at both the Cannes and Toronto film festivals. But I finally caught up with it a week ago, and now I know it will be fairly intolerable if Lesley Manville, who plays a sad and scattered and increasingly desperate single in Leigh’s masterful film, doesn’t end up as one of the five Best Actress nominees this year. It really is one of those hot-button performances that can’t be shrugged off.

Another Year star Lesley Manville at Manhattan’s Regency hotel — Tuesday, 10.5.10, 10:20 am

By the end of this expansive but absorbing film Manville’s sadness just floors you. She’s Eleanor Rigby with a wine buzz, and you just know from the get-go that her character, Mary, is probably headed for a sad denoument. We’ve all been trained like dogs to expect that “a character with a problem” will be given a shot at repairing that problem sometime late in the second act or early in the third. Not this time.

Another Year is less of a solitary character study than a family ensemble piece. The central characters or anchors, so to speak, are a 50ish couple, Tim and Gerri (Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen), who are friendly with Mary, a divorcee with an occasional susceptibility for fantasy and delusion, and invite her by for brunches and whatnot. (She and Gerri work in the same clinic) There are three other characters who pop in and out, but Mary is the one who’s tragic and teetering, and from our perspective the film becomes almost a kind of death march for the poor woman as the realization sinks in that Mary is stuck and slipping and (God help her) probably doomed.

Mike Leigh is no softy, and Another Year, amusing and finely observed and character-rich as if frequently is, is no walk in the park. But after you’ve seen it there’s no forgetting poor Mary, or, more to the point, the brilliant Ms. Manville.