In a response to last week’s Greatest Insults video (which I posted on 7.1), Philadelphia Inquirer critic Carrie Rickey yesterday voiced a preference for ridicule with “more polish and less profanity.” Like, for example, Burt Lancaster‘s kiss-off to Tony Curtis in Sweet Smell of Success (1957): “You’re dead, son. Go get buried.”

That is slightly incorrect. The line is actually “You’re dead, son. Go get yourself buried.” No biggie in itself, but Rickey used the quote in her headline. So I wrote her yesterday afternoon at 5:48 pm (sitting in Fanelli’s, using my iPhone) and explained her excusable error. She wrote back at 9:37 pm with a dispute. “According to imdb.com and an Ernest Lehman essay I cross-checked with, I have it right,” she said. “Of course, they could both be wrong. Next time I watch SSoS I’ll listen extra-hard.”

Yeah, do that. Because the IMDB has the quote as “You’re dead, son — go get yourself buried. Wikiquote has the quote as “You’re dead, son — go get yourself buried.” And I have it as that in my head, having watched Sweet Smell of Success something like 12 or 13 times (including three times in a theatre). Sorry, Carrie, but I got this.

Lindsay Lohan has been sentenced to 90 days in jail — yes! suffer! — followed by 90 days of rehab in a lockdown facility of some kind. (I think.). In a pre-sentence statement she was tearful, submissive, pleading, plain-spoken. “I have to provide for myself…I have to work,” she said. “I’m not taking this as a joke. It’s my life, it’s my career.”

I love it when people who’ve lived upper stratosphere lah-lah lives get taken down and have to submit to Average Joe rules and regulations. It’s extra wonderful when they cry upon hearing the bad news, as Lohan did yesterday afternoon. I heard the news yesterday afternoon and saw the TMZ tapes last night. I always wanted to see something like this happen to Mia Farrow‘s Daisy Buchanan in the 1974 film version of The Great Gatsby, and now it finally has.

There’s also the matter of Lilo’s acting talent (which she has a fair amount of) and the fact that her addictions have been taking her down and that she really needed a combination wake-up and face-slap. She’ll do about three weeks (the average sentence on raps like this is about 25%), and plus 90 days of rehab. Speaking as the son of a lifelong alcoholic and a guy who had a vodka-and-lemonade problem in the mid ’90s, I know that’s a good thing. I’ve seen it all and I know that the lives of people who make constant whoopee always turn tragic — hurt careers, disease, early death, financial issues. That judge did LiLo a huge favor, and all she could say was “what?….what?”

Is Lohan more marketable now? Will raising the dough for Inferno be a tad easier? I would think so.

I’m iPhoning and therefore can’t embed a link, but Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet is reporting that Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life was screened for the MPAA within the last couple of weeks and has been rated PG-13. The big news, he reports, is that Bill Pohlad‘s Apparition wasn’t listed as the distributor.

Rope of Silicon‘s Bill Cody has ripped into Restrepo co-director Sebastian Junger by (a) noting the film’s non-political, no-bigger-picture viewpoint, which bothered me greatly in my own review, (b) noting that Junger has recently advocated a pro-war position on TV talk shows (stay the course, send in more troops), and (c) wonders if the lefties who’ve praised this film really understand what it (and Junger) are saying?

“Did Sebastian Junger sucker Sundance into supporting an Afghanistan War with no end in sight?,” the article begins.

“Junger lucked into a perfect storm when Restrepo, his feature documentary about a fire base in Afghanistan opened the same week General Stanley McChrystal was forced out as the Commander of US troops in that country

“Junger was already slated to appear on many TV and radio shows promoting the critically acclaimed Sundance Jury Prize Winner, but when Afghanistan became the biggest news story of the week Junger was added to several guest lists including a well-publicized panel on NBC’s Meet The Press. On each of these shows Junger was asked his opinion of the ongoing war and each time he argued for more time and more troops. In other words, more war.

“As I watched Junger on these shows I wondered aloud if this is what the programmers at Sundance had in mind when they promoted Junger’s film earlier this year and heaped awards and praise on it.

“They made no bones about pushing their anti-Iraq agenda in 2006 and 2007. The Festival handed out awards to Iraq In Fragments and No End In Sight while Geoffrey Gilmore gave interviews about the ability of documentaries to change the world. Sundance also helped produce and fund Iraq In Fragments and made no bones about the festival’s take on the Iraq War. They were against it.

“Now they’ve supported a director who is very pro-war, albeit not the Iraq War. Perhaps they didn’t understand what Junger and co-director Tim Hetherington were trying to say with this film? Or did the charming Junger and his modern-day Hemmingway shtick just take them in?

“Junger is a star,” Cody reminds. “The kind of star voted Sexiest Author by People magazine in 1997. The kind of star that Sundancers eat up. A Vanity Fair-contributing, hipster bar-owning, best selling author kind of star. And the movie isn’t supposed to raise questions about the war. It’s supposed to get you to support the troops. To get the country to pony up more men and more treasure in the future.

Cody, who has a military history, says he personally “wouldn’t give a platform to someone like Junger who obviously has an agenda. He did reporting from Afghanistan in the ’90s and doesn’t want the Taliban to come back. I’m not sure he told Sundance that when he pitched his movie to the powers that be at the festival. But I do know that’s what he’s telling Charlie Rose now.

“So I ask, is Sundance in favor of this war? Or did they just fall for Junger’s handsome face?”

My only issue with Cody’s piece is his assumption that the people running the Sundance Film Festival actually “take” political stands, or that they present a unified political front on this or that issue. They’re a leftie organization, of course, and most lefties are appalled at the waste and the sense of floundering that the Afghanistan War represents. But I’m sure they’d say that if they found a first-rate conservative-minded documentary, they wouldn’t hesitate to program it — as they didn’t hesitate to program Restrepo.

I’m just glad that someone else is saying “consider the pro-war current” in this film. I was feeling kind of alone there for a while.

Marshall Fine has posted a top-ten half-time assessment of 2010 films. I throughly agree with his putting Greenberg, The Ghost Writer and Toy Story 3 on the list. But we part company after these. Not in a Grand Canyon sense — more like we’re standing on opposite sides of a creek.

I liked When You’re Strange as far as it went, but it wasn’t anything to jump up and down about. (Never saw the Johnny Depp-narrated version.) I gave Conor McPherson‘s The Eclipse a 7 — nice mood, gripping vibe at times, horrible emphasis on Aidan Quinn‘s boorish-and-boozy-Irish-writer character. I hated most of The Red Riding Trilogy (particularly the first one, 1984, with Andrew Garfield), in large part because I couldn’t understand half of it. I never got to see Exit Through The Gift Shop — nolo contendere.

Shutter Island is way too obvious and emphatic — a feverish, ultra-labored atmospheric dream by way of thunder, lightning, heaving seas, jagged rocks and round sweaty faces. Winter’s Bone is about Jennifer Lawrence‘s lead performance — the film is grungy and draggy and vaguely depressing with too many middle-aged beard-os in plaid shirts sucking down cigarettes. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is an airport-lounge movie — plot, clue, plot, clue, plot, clue, plot, clue, plot, clue.

My best of the year so far are Lee Unkrich‘s Toy Story 3, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Biutiful (Cannes), Doug Liman‘s Fair Game (Cannes), Olivier Assayas‘ Carlos (Cannes), Aaron Schneider‘s Get Low, Noah Baumbach‘s Greenberg, Roman Polanski‘s The Ghost Writer and Philipp Stolzl‘s North Face. I presume I’ll be putting Chris Nolan‘s Inception to this list fairly soon.

The best docs are Charles Ferguson‘s Inside Job (Cannes); Amir Bar Lev‘s The Tillman Story; Alex Gibney‘s Untitled Eliot Spitzer Film; Kate Davis and David Heilbroner‘s Stonewall Uprising; Vikram Jayanti‘s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector; and Don Argott‘s Art of the Steal.

I begged again this morning to be allowed to see Inception at this afternoon’s Manhattan screening. You could hear a pin drop. After yesterday’s love-in, I’m wondering how to approach Chris Nolan‘s film without any kind of attitude. It’s a natural thing. All those ecstatic critics, all that moisture. Something tells me MCN’s David Poland will attend tomorrow’s screening with a bit of an “oh, yeah?” mindset.

I actually feel good about having grilled folks who’ve seen it, and having learned all about the third act revelations, and asked several logic-driven questions. As part of the fourth wave, I’m fully prepared and ready to rock. The first wave hit Omaha Beach at the late-June Inception junket. The second wave splashed into the waters last Friday night and went ashore yesterday afternoon at 3 pm. The third wave is getting wet today and tomorrow on both coasts. And then the clean-up crew — the engineers! — will land next Tuesday night.

I was mistaken. Nimrod Antal‘s Predators (20th Century Fox, 7.9), which will be shown to critics tomorrow morning, is more than it seems (i.e., Aliens in the jungle without Ripley or Newt or Burke, and without Cameron at the helm). And the name Robert Rodriguez is not an automatic assurance of cheeseball “style over content” exploitation jizz. I don’t know what I was thinking. I need to cut back on the snarly commentary.

And…what else did I say? Oh, yeah. The cast members — Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Laurence Fishburne, Danny Trejo, Alice Braga — are all at the peak of their fame and not sliding down the slope.

Is there a possibility that one or more of these commandos might actually spot the predators from a distance and do what they can to escape or prepare before the inevitable face-to-face? Instead of having them be suddenly surprised when the beast appears out of nowhere and leaps on top of them, which is what each and every action director does without fail? So…you know, it’ll scare people with the usual “boo!”?

I’m truly delighted — really, honestly — at the prospect of not attending this week’s press screenings of Jon Turtletaub and Jerry Bruckheimer‘s The Sorcerers’ Apprentice (Disney, 7.16). Does Bruckheimer assemble his staffers every Monday morning and say, “Okay, guys — what new movie material can we find that will allow for numerous action scenes with brazenly digital effects that’ll look exactly like brazenly digital effects?”

Another Jon Turtletaub hack job/whore move with an extra icing of slick…wonderful. Another reminder that the Jerry Bruckheimer brand of the mid’ 90s and early aughts used to mean movies like Crimson Tide and blue-chip, sirloin-steak guy movies (mocking the big-budget action genre and at the same time kicking ass with it), and now it means films that wouldn’t be fit to shine the shoes of Con Air or Gone in Sixty Seconds. And another wackazoid, wiggy-haired Nic Cage performance as he seduces, entrances and indoctrinates Jay Baruchel into the world of CG wizardry and car chases and idiotic fireball effects…magnificent.

Repeating: The Rock (’96) was Cage’s first big cash-in after the acclaim he received from Mike Figgis‘ Leaving Las Vegas (’95). He mainly starred in a series of crazy-kat super-salaried extreme action thrillers for the next four or five years (Con Air, Face/Off, Gone in Sixty Seconds, Snake Eyes) with the curious or slight or “meh” punctuations of Bringing Out The Dead, 8MM, and City of Angels.

Then came the disappointing, doleful and disorienting Family Man, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and Windtalkers, followed by two master-stroke performances in Spike Jonze‘s Adaptation and Ridley Scott‘s Matchstick Men — Cage’s last artistic glory period (’02 to ’03). After this began Cage’s full wackazoid streak (broken up only by the National Treasure movies) that continues to this day — The Wicker Man, Ghost Rider, that Fu-Manchu Grindhouse walk-on, Bangkok Dangerous, Knowing, Bad Lieutenant, Kick-Ass…and now this.

While Patricia Leigh Brown‘s 7.4 N.Y. Times piece about the revival of small-town movie theatres is an upper — a piece of agreeable, spirited reportage about people coming together — the photo shows precisely the kind of theatre that I can’t stand to watch a film in. Long and narrow, a cinematic bowling alley, a 13 foot wide screen that can’t present real 2.35 to 1 Scope and looks way too small from the rear of the house.

With viewing conditions this crappy, it just goes to show that movies aren’t the draw — communities just want to congregate and say “hiya” and feel the communal vibe.

Inception review sample #1: “Inception is a movie so vibrant, so alive, so relentlessly original that it can be forgiven its transgressions in an instant. It’s an entertainment with vivid, profound ideas, precisely the kind of daring that ought to be backed by big money.” — In Contention‘s Kris Tapley.

Inception review sample #2: “Imagine a film being made in 2010 where you have absolutely no idea where it is going or how it will end. These were the worlds created by revolutionary filmmakers, like Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, David Cronenberg and David Lynch. With Inception we have a film and a filmmaker that has broken new ground and very nearly reinvented the form, and without 3-D. Nolan gets there on the power of the story. See it on IMAX and it will blow your mind. I am sure more than a few will discover that seeing the movie in an altered state will also blow your mind, not that I’m advocating that.” — Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone.

Inception review sample #3: “Inception is a masterpiece. Making a huge film with big ambitions, Christopher Nolan never missteps and manages to create a movie that, at times, feels like a miracle. And sometimes it doesn’t even feel like a movie; while presented in woefully retro 2D, Inception creates a complete sense of immersion in another world. The screen before you is just another layer of the dream.” — CHUD’s Devin Faraci.

Inception review sample #4: “Is it the first great movie of the summer? No — Toy Story 3 is. But Inception is probably the second great movie of the summer. Understand, a single viewing is hardly enough to come to terms with the film, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page and Tom Hardy as a crack team that invades Cillian Murphy‘s dreams and find unimaginable perils in the subconscious. But that first viewing is enough to realize that Inception is a dense, stylish, thorny, dazzling film that delivers as a thrill ride but gives viewers lots to chew on and puzzle through. It is not a typical summer movie, but it’s bold and imaginative in the vein of the best summer movies; it’s way too big and spectacular to be an art film, but it can leave you scratching your head in a good way.” — TheWrap‘s Steve Pond.

Inception review sample #5:”A Kubrickian masterpiece with heart, Inception delivers and then some, thanks to clever original screenwriting and exhilarating mise-en-scene. When it opens July 16, this eye-popping film will wow moviegoers all over the world — its complexities will only encourage debate and repeat viewings — and should also score well with critics and year-end awards groups. Oscar nominations in technical categories are a certainty, but Inception is also a strong contender for multiple nominations, including Best Picture.” — Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson.

Inception review sample #6: “If movies are shared dreams, then Christopher Nolan is surely one of Hollywood’s most inventive dreamers, given the evidence of his commandingly clever Inception. Applying a vivid sense of procedural detail to a fiendishly intricate yarn set in the labyrinth of the subconscious, the writer-director has devised a heist thriller for surrealists, a Jungian’s Rififi, that challenges viewers to sift through multiple layers of (un)reality. Nolan places mind-bending visual effects and a top-flight cast in service of a boldly cerebral vision that demands, and rewards, the utmost attention. Even when its ambition occasionally outstrips its execution, Inception tosses off more ideas and fires on more cylinders than most blockbusters would have the nerve to attempt.” — Variety‘s Justin Chang

Inception review sample #7: “If you don’t follow [every aspect of Inception], join the club. It will perhaps take multiple viewings of these multiple dream states to extract all the logic and regulations. (At least that’s what the filmmakers hope.) Something else might come more easily on subsequent viewings: With incredibly tense situations suspended across so many dreams within dreams, all that restless energy might induce a kind of reverse stress in audiences, producing not quite tedium, but you may want to shout, ‘C’mon, let’s get on with it!’ This is especially true when the hectic action in one dream, a van rolling down a hill with its dreamers aboard, causes a hotel corridor to roll in another, producing a weightless state in the characters. Even Fred Astaire didn’t dance on the ceiling as much as these guys do.” — Hollywood Reporter‘s Kirk Honeycutt.

Inception review sample #8: “A stunning achievement and the most completely entertaining film I’ve seen in years. [Nolan] has made an utter crowd pleaser, an epic piece of entertainment that ultimately feels so simple precisely because of all of its complexity, and one that rouses and inspires and excites in the same way as blockbusters comprised of pure spectacle.” — Cinematical‘s Todd Gilchrist.

Inception review sample #9: “Inception, like Nolan’s earlier work, deals with a broken man, determined to fix his mistakes but only making things worse in the process. That could easily describe Memento or The Prestige or The Dark Knight or even his one remake, Insomnia. Yet even with Nolan returning to this idea, worrying at it, exploring different ways it can play out, he doesn’t feel like he’s stuck or marking time. I’d argue the opposite is true: by refining this idea over time and over different films and in different ways, Nolan is becoming merciless in his ability to engage both intellectually and emotionally. As a result, Inception flattened me, and even now, more than a week after my first viewing of it, I find myself turning over images and ideas from the film almost constantly.” — Hitfix‘s Drew McWeeny.

Inception review sample #10: “In terms of sheer originality, ambition and achievement, Inception is the movie of the summer, the movie of the year and the movie of our dreams. Director Christopher Nolan’s heist film about a group of dream extractors who can invade a person’s subconscious to steal — or plant — vital information may remind you of James Bond, The Matrix, or even Nolan’s own Memento, when in fact it’s unlike any other. A bold, inventive, audacious entertainment, Inception charts a new course for motion pictures and sets the bar very, very high. Matrix-style business should be in order, even though audiences will have to pay strict attention to get the full experience (perish the thought). Simplistic moviegoers who like their blockbusters cooked in predictability may not get it but Nolan fans and those who like their action married to new ideas will flock to multiplexes for repeated viewings.” — Boxoffice‘s Pete Hammond.

Inception review sample #11: “What is most infuriating about Inception is how close it gets to being something really great. Instead, we’re left with Solaris (but never as existential or as meditative) meets On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (but never as fun or thrilling). Compared to most of this year’s releases, Inception should still impress and, at the very least, inspire some worthwhile discussion, but it’s hardly the heady blockbuster summertime savior that audiences have been waiting for.” — Coming Soon‘s Silas Lesnick.

I found a possibly-legitimate quote about Inception in which a guy says that “the best way I can put it is, imagine if The Matrix raped The Fountain…but in a good way.” (What the hell does that mean?) Another guy, I’ve been told, feels it’s a close kin of Shutter Island, apart from Leonardo DiCaprio being the star. In both films there’s tragic current involving emotional loss that’s affecting the lead guy, and is causing lots of pain and stress and disturbance.

So I ran this by a friend who saw Inception a while back, and he said he gets the Shutter Island analogy, but insists it’s mainly a stew — it’s James Bondian, it’s The Matrix, it’s Ocean’s 11, it’s The Dark Knight…a lot of things thrown into the pot. My friend loves it and ranks it high on the list, but doesn’t think the Eloi will warm to it like they could or should, and while every cinematic Catholic will see Inception without fail, he thinks Salt (which comes out a week later) is going to sell a lot more tickets.

He remarked that he’s friendly with a critic who didn’t care for it much, and feels that Chris Nolan is too tricky for his own good. He also heard about the husband of a woman who was invited to see it who came along to a screening, and then fell asleep. Inception runs almost precisely 150 minutes, he said.