I’ve just clarified and expanded upon my problems with the color orange, which I began discussing late yesterday afternoon. I brought it up initially because orange rules like a dictator in a series of movie posters created Olly Moss for the Alamo Draft House’s Rolling Road Show. Striking, yes, but a little off-putting. Well, slightly.

In response to my contrarian comments HE reader bmcintire pointed out that “this Roadshow is being called the ‘We Are All Workers Rolling Roadshow,’ orange being shorthand for ‘construction’ or ‘working class‘. You even put the word ‘Work’ in your headline. Take a look at the cluster of posters on The Daily What and tell me the first thing you think of isn’t ‘Construction Zone.'”

Precisely.

Orange is a basic stand-out color used for plastic construction hats, street traffic cones, hunter jackets, prison jump suits, etc. Obviously. But this in itself makes it seem like a symbol for regimentation and social pigenholing. It’s a working-class color, yes, but with socially segregationist connotations. A kind of negative branding, if you will.

If you’re a certain kind of prole (or, not to link the two, a criminal), you’re going to have to make a place in your life for the most obnoxious color in the spectrum. No ifs, ands or buts — you’re just going to have to deal with it. But if you’re an X-factor or an upscale professional-class type or a naturalist, orange can be avoided or at least be segregated as an accent color (which is okay from time to time). The point is that professional class or X-factor types have a choice to keep orange in its place (and they all get this, of course), and many proles for the most part don’t.

Orange symbology in this sense is so burned into general public consciousness that it almost diminishes the natural attractiveness of orange in nature — the fruit, the occasional flower, the oriole, sunsets. Notice that nature is tasteful enough to use orange very sparingly. Nature knows what Frank Sinatra and Olly Moss didn’t recognize — that orange used with any kind of force or emphasis feels a bit oppressive. It’s a safety color when you’re hunting or working construction or standing on a busy traffic road in the evening, but it’s also a kind of control color — a symbol used to enforce rules and segregate prisoners and make people stay within boundaries. Orange doesn’t say “life can occasionally be beautiful or transporting.” It says “do this,” “watch out,” “don’t go there,” “slow down,” etc.

The notion that orange is a kind of aesthetic repellent if delivered in heavy doses is not exotic rocket science. I think everyone understands this deep down. Like aromas, colors matter much more than people seem to realize. They permeate and create moods, etc.

I know if I see a football team with orange jerseys, something in me will start rooting for them to lose. Neurotic as this sounds, I never liked the sound of Paul Verhoeven‘s Soldier of Orange because of this phobia. During the ’70s orange always seemed a bit odious by its association with Irish Protestants (I’ve always sided with the Catholics in that conflict). I always winced a bit when I visited Jett in Syracuse from ’06 to ’10 with orange being that university’s color — banners, jerseys, T-shirts, signs. (It used to be blue and orange, but then they dropped the blue.) I think I found a way to relax early on with Stanley Kubrick‘s A Clockwork Orange because it was clear from the get-go that it was just a name or sound that Anthony Burgess had selected at random and had nothing to do with a color scheme.

An 8.4 Guardian story by John Crace advances the notion that The Expendables is Sex and the City for guys. Think about that. It’s generally accepted that the Sex and the City films were awful but women paid to see them anyway. So one could conclude that Grace is saying that The Expendables more or less sucks, but that won’t deter the guys. Is that a selling point?

It has to be said that the dopey (and sometimes hilarious) splatter-gore spills that sold Stallone’s last Rambo film don’t pay off as well in The Expendables. Too much time and effort is spent on character embroidery and smart-ass macho camaraderie. It’s fun to see bad guys get blown apart (and for the most part they have no chance against “the boys,” and that feels good on some level). It’s mainly about the good guys just barrelling on through like it’s no one’s business — i.e., the Sex and the City cheer-on stuff — but The Expendables needs to be more than just a show for the home team.

A quality action movie always reaches out to skeptics and fence-sitters. Win that group over and your movie is home free. But director and co-writer Stallone doesn’t even try for this kind of approval. He seems content to operate from his safety zone, and to me that spells lazy-ass. Hell, it is lazy. Would that this film had been assembled by high-grade, top-talent people. I would have been down with The Expendables if it had been a ’90s Jerry Bruckheimer steak dinner. But it’s not — it’s tacos and cheese with chips.

Variety‘s Peter DeBruge said today that The Expendables is “a nearly incoherent all-stars-on-deck actioner that plays like Grown Ups on nitro or a brutish, blue-collar Ocean’s Eleven. The muddled execution falls far short of the talent involved” and “plausibility [doesn’t] seem to have been much of a concern. Basically, the plot serves to support the action sequences” although “the editors [haven’t] assembled the action footage footage in such a way that we can tell where characters are in relation to one another or what’s going on. [The film is] not so indispensable.”

The Alamo Draft House’s Rolling Road Show begins on 8.6 in Los Angeles with a screening of Jackie Brown, and concludes on 8.27 in New York City with a screening of The Godfather, Part II on — get this — “a Manhattan rooftop near Little Italy.” A week earlier (8.20) On The Waterfront will be shown on Hoboken’s Pier a Park. Thing is, there’s almost nothing left of the Hoboken that Elia Kazan shot in 1953 — it’s mostly been torn down, paved over and Starbucked. Even the echoes have disappeared. Or at least the meatheads have.

I don’t like guys who fall into their movie theatre seats like children. A guy did this in front of me a couple of nights ago. He just flopped backwards, his massive bulk collapsing into his rocking-chair seat and causing the hard-plastic backing to slam me in the knees. “Jerk!,” I muttered to myself. An elegant man always eases himself down onto the seat and gently leans back on his seat. If there’d been a scene in To Catch a Thief in which Cary Grant took Grace Kelly to a movie. you can bet he wouldn’t have pointed to two empty theatre chairs and said to Kelly, “Oh, look…watch me!” and then turned around and back-flopped into his chair like a kid splashing back-first into a pool.

Some kind of orange fetish has recently caught on among movie-poster designers. Last night in the 14th Street and 8th Avenue station I snapped a just-mounted one-sheet for Anton Corbijn‘s The American (Focus Features, 9.1). And then this morning Awards Daily posted an OMG Posters display of various Olly Moss one-sheet designs for several classic films. Was Moss hired by Focus Features to do an American poster, or is it just what it seems — a coincidence?

Orange has always seemed like an overly provocative color. Rude, obnoxious — doesn’t get along well with others. Splashy, splotchy. What’s orange good for besides napkins or kitschy ’50s furniture or summer dresses for older women? The fact that orange was Frank Sinatra‘s favorite color always made me think less of the guy. So I’m not a fan of orange-dominated movie posters. I never cared for that orange Vertigo poster from way back, and I’m not that intrigued by the American poster, and I think Moss’s posters for On The Waterfront and Rocky are kinda strange and what-the-fucky.

I understand that designers have to go where they want to go, etc., but let’s dump the orange at the first opportunity. Mustard…now there‘s a color!

A complete wifi modem meltdown in the Brooklyn apartment requires a hurried visit to Time Warner Cable’s offices on Paidge Avenue. This may or may not be followed by a 3:30 pm screening of Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 (i.e., the conclusion of Jean-Francois Richet‘s two-part French-produced crime thriller). The only good thing that has happened so far today is that Mike the building owner has fixed the front doorbell.

The Wrap‘s Daniel Frankel has reported data that shows moviegoers are becoming less and less interested in paying 3-D premium prices to see mezzo-mezzo 3-D fare. The cause of the situation is (a) “uneven” (underwhelming or flat-out shitty) quality from the films themselves, and (b) the ruinous effect of fake 3-D, which DreamWorks honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg ranted about four months ago.

“Nearly 80 percent of Avatar‘s audience saw it in 3D…but 3D’s box-office trajectory has been pointing downward almost ever since,” Frankel writes. The obvious lesson is that if the 3D films that have opened since Avatar were (a) as good as Avatar and (b) delivered the same quality 3D, there probably wouldn’t be a drop in revenue worth reporting about.

Things might have been different also if the fake 3-D used by Clash of the Titans hadn’t poisoned the audience’s attitude about 3-D technology. James Cameron built 3-D into a wow attraction, and Titans delivered the first degradation that gradually convinced audiences that 3D wasn’t necessarily worth the extra cost.

What is Frankel’s report really about? The fact only 45 % of Despicable Me‘s revenue came from 3D showings and Warner Bros.’s 3-D presentations of Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore grossed only $6.9 million. I don’t know anyone who gave a damn about seeing either of these films, 3-D or flat.

What we need right now (but of course won’t get) is a Hitler/Downfall video with Bruno Ganz subbing for Katzenberg and raging at the greedies for diluting the 3-D brand in record time.

Tonight I saw a significant portion of George Gallo‘s Middle Men, an overly emphatic faux-Tarantino crime movie about a fair-minded, level-headed businessman (Luke Wilson) who gets caught up in a porn-related internet billing service in the ’90s. Anyway, there’s an extended walking-through-an-orgy sequence that didn’t make the final cut sitting on pornhub.com.

The sequence isn’t as good as Stanley Kubrick‘s in Eyes Wide Shut and it isn’t exactly Scorsese-ish either, but it’s not half bad.

Opening on 8.6 through Paramount Vantage, Middle Men is based on the ’90s experiences of producer Christopher Mallick. Gallo directed and co-wrote the exaggerated script with Andy Weiss. Costars include Giovanni Ribisi, Gabriel Macht and James Caan.

Watch the first 15 minutes of Lennon Naked, a John Lennon biopic that aired on British TV six weeks ago, and you’ll understand right away that it kicks Nowhere Boy‘s ass, and that Christopher Eccleston‘s lead performance is, like, way better than Aaron Johnson‘s.

You can complain that Eccleston, 46, is way too old to be playing Lennon in his 20s, but his performance more than compensates.

“It’s a brilliant performance in a brilliant film,” exclaimed The Guardian‘s Sam Wollaston, “because what Eccleston does get spot-on is the spirit of Lennon, with all his complications, contradictions and demons.

“It’s certainly no whitewash. He’s cruel to everyone – Brian Epstein, Cynthia, little Julian, the rest of the band, everyone except Yoko. He’s bitter and troubled, yet also idealistic. Very funny too, full of acerbic putdowns. The press conferences, where he returns caustic one-liners with top spin at the assembled press, are fabulous.”

Another Guardian piece notes that Lennon Naked “was shot on a shoestring budget in 18 days.”

Warning: Late last night HE reader Richard Huffman urged me to “remove the video embed immediately. Clicking on it and watching that movie through Megavideo managed to install some bullshit malware called ‘antimalware doctor’ on my machine. Not your fault, but I’m dreading the next four hours of disinfecting. Right now I have like 15 pop ups all over my desktop…ugh. Megavideo is notorious for putting up videos of questionable legality and then delivering viruses and malware when you click on the various play and pause buttons.”

I had my reasons for not getting into last Friday’s conversation about Liam Neeson saying he’s no longer attached to play Abraham Lincoln because he’s gotten too old.

For one thing that’s bullshit. Lincoln was 56 when he was shot and Neeson is a trim and healthy-looking 58. On top of which Lincoln wasn’t exactly a vision of youth and vigor with his haggard features and scraggly beard so give me a break. Neeson could be 60 or 62 and still get away with playing him, easy.

The other thing, I suspect, is that Neeson said what he said because like me and many others, he’s had it up to here with Steven Spielberg‘s endless dilly-dallying on the Lincoln-Neeson bipic, which has gone on for three or four years now.

Spielberg is seemingly (a) afraid of anything too Amistad-y (i.e., political principle in a historical context), and (b) probably doesn’t want to suffer through the same kind of reputation-diminishing pans that greeted Amistad‘s release. Deep down he’s afraid of the expectations that would be attached to any Honest Abe film. I think we all sense that now.

So if you ask me Neeson saying he’s too old to play Lincoln was code, I suspect, for (a) “I can’t deal with this bearded little pussy any longer,” (b) “I have my pride” and (c) “he’s kept me in limbo long enough.”