My honest-to-God first reaction to this latest Avatar poster was that the Na’vi looks like Michael Jackson during the Thriller period. I can see a lock of hair dropping down that reminds me his mid ’80s coif. If Jackson had made a music video about a dancing alien cat man and wore cat-eye contacts, this is exactly how he’d look. I look at that face and I really don’t see Zoe Saldana — I see a gay cat boy.

There’s a 50th anniversary screening in Santa Monica this evening of Stanley Kramer‘s On The Beach, an end-of-the-world drama with Gregory Peck, Ava Garner, Anthony Perkins, Fred Astaire, etc. It seems a little too reserved by today’s standards but it holds up half-decently, especially those submarine-visit scenes to the tomb cities of San Diego and San Francisco. A little on-the-nose (“There’s still time, brother”) but subliminally moving. Exquisite black-and-white photography by Giuseppe Rotunno (The Leopard, Fellini Satyricon, Amarcord).

A mildly amusing mutual masturbation chat between Sherlock Holmes director Guy Ritchie and star Robert Downey, Jr. appears in this Sunday’s L.A. Times magazine. Note: Mentioning that you’re well paid or loaded or anything along these lines makes you sound shallow. And recalling your Hemingway-esque response to a cut lip sounds like macho boasting — sorry.

Sherlock Holmes star Robert Downey, Jr.

Ritchie: “You really got your hands dirty on this shoot. In fact, you got punched in the mouth — seven stitches. And you didn’t fuckin’ cry like a baby. You just spat a bit and carried on. That was a shift in my attitude toward you, too. I thought, Okay, that changed the paradigm. Because you get paid a lot of money. I get paid a lot of money. And we’re indulged with the things we’re indulged with. From my point of view, we have the best jobs in the world, and I suspect you think so, too.

Downey: “I love it. But what did I do when I got that big cut? I just hoped it was deep enough that it was going to need enough stitches to get your approval. I was nowhere near the cosmos for about 12 seconds. Then I think I peeled my lip inside out, and I was so happy to hear you say, ‘That was the best fight.'”

Ritchie: “I was happy to be the guy who said, ‘Oh, that needs stitches,’ because usually I’m the guy who’s like, ‘Oh, fuckin’ stitches–don’t worry about it.’

Downey: “We needed to finish whatever we were doing. I wish I had bled more, to tell you the truth, but that might have alarmed other folks. It was kind of a coming of age for me — thinking of being not 22 but 44. But I very well remember going to the hospital.”

The awkward/dull parts were trimmed out by Sam Donelly; the photos are by Sam Jones.

Daily Mail columnist Baz Bamigboye has responded to the HE readers who ripped him for putting a confrontational question to Antichrist director Lars von Trier during last May’s Cannes Film Festival, which I recounted in this 12.7 article.

“Some of the comments are a tad po-faced and holier than thou,” Baz begins. “I’m really amused that if one makes a comment that people disagree with it must be because I’m ignorant,or that I didn’t understand what Von Trier was on about. Well, I understood perfectly and have publicly defended Lars in years past. I just didn’t happen to care for Antichrist.

“One of the commenters suggested that my press conference question was something that should be expected from a Daily Mail journalist and that I am therefore an idiot. That person is entitled to his opinion and allowed to make it just as much as I’m allowed to make mine. My views, however, are my own and I do not follow a Daily Mail line. I just thought I’d mention that because some of the comments were rather ignorant in assuming otherwise.”

A number of people seem to have missed my 11.27 Invictus review, which of course was posted over Thanksgiving weekend. (On a Friday.) Clint Eastwood‘s film is finally opening on Friday, so I’ve re-posted some bullet points:

Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon in Clint Eastwood’s Invictus.

* Invictus is a nice, cleanly told, mildly stirring South African sports film that should have been released in the late spring or early summer. Because if it had been it wouldn’t have all this weight on it. The fact that it’s the latest Eastwood film with a December opening has everyone hot and bothered. Well, cool down.

* It does remind us of what a centered and wise and very cool guy Nelson Mandela is/was. But it’s all exposition, exposition and more exposition. And there’s almost no “story” in the sense that there are no character turns, no twists, no nothing in the way of surprises or intensifications. A good amount of it — most of it, really — is about South African government employees watching rugby games or standing around offices or sitting on buses or in the backs of cars or watching TV. (TV screens get a major workout in this film.) Or about athletes jogging and playing rugby and working out.

* Invictus is about an “important’ subject” — one we should think about and perhaps learn from — but it mainly just ambles along. It kinda gets off the ground at the end, but rousing sports-movie finales don’t travel like they used to because we’ve seen them so damn often. You can’t just have the good-guy team win and show everybody cheering. That’s not enough any more.

* There’s no getting around the fact (and it pains me to say this, being a major fan of Unforgiven, Play Misty For Me, High Plains Drifter, Breezy, Million Dollar Baby and Gran Torino) that Invictus is agreeable but second-tier Eastwood.

* Morgan Freeman and the take-it-easy, don’t-push-it quality to Clint’s direction are two winning elements. But it should have been a more layered thing. On one level there would have been what we have now — an above-board, what-you-see-is-what-you-get story about how a rugby team and a championship game helped bring a divided nation closer together. And there also would have also been…something else. A more penetrating look at the travails and fears of Mandela or Matt Damon‘s Francois Peinaar. A parallel story, a powerful subplot, a more prominent undercurrent or some other big thematic echo. Something.

* The first half-hour is the best part, by far. Freeman’s manner and personality are quite winning, and I was particularly impressed by a scene in which he gives a low-key address to some white staffers who are presuming they’ll be fired by the new Mandela administration. There’s also a good moment as the film begins in which we’re shown a white high-school rugby team practicing behind a chain-link fence and some young black kids playing rugby in the lot across the street, and the way they react differently when Mandela’s little motorcade drives by.

* But once the rugby-championship element kicks in Invictus starts to flatten out and restrict itself to lateral passing back and forth. People said that Martin Scorsese‘s The Age of Innocence was a movie about cufflinks. And that Anthony Minghella‘s Cold Mountain was about a man walking through the woods. Boiled down, Invictus is (after the first half-hour) about people watching TVs, watching the rugby team play in a stadium, talking about what they’re seeing or thinking, and commenting on what may or may not happen.

* And feeling exhilaration, of course, when the Big Game finally happens and (spoiler!) South Africa beats New Zealand. That’s all it really is.

* I almost admire Eastwood for keeping it as simple and straightforward as it is. It’s nice to see restraint and centeredness in a director, and there’s something very elegant about the way he steers Invictus along at 35 mph without cranking things up for the sake of cranking things up.

* I know, I know — a satisfying plate of pasta doesn’t have to be “brilliant.” It just has to be carefully prepared and well seasoned and made with love. Invictus is a very pleasant and mildly stirring bowl of fettucini with a highly agreeable lead performance by Freeman. But it’s not one of those ratatouille dishes that win awards and inspire raves from restaurant critics.

Bad movies tend to stay bad over the generations, but the stories about how they were screwed up and the agonies that the various participants shared (both during shooting and after release) are always good reading material.

And so it follows that this short but well-crafted John M. Miller article about the making of Billy Wilder‘s Kiss me Stupid provides a much better time than one could possibly derive from watching the 1964 film, which was a total fiasco — the Bonfire of the Vanities of its day — and still kinda stinks.

Which reminds me that Julie Salamon‘s The Devil’s Candy, a book about the making of Brian DePalma‘s Vanities, was far more entertaining than the film. And that the two-hour “Making of Cleopatra” documentary on the Cleopatra DVD is a much richer portrait of tragic grandiosity than Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s 1963 epic.

You want some real tracking excitement? Take a look at these Sherlock Holmes numbers. Particularly how total awareness and definite interest numbers are very strong across the board in all sectors. The weakest demo are under-25 females, but even they seem fairly enthusiastic with a 41 definite interest with over-25 females showing a 46 definite interest. Compare that to Avatar‘s 30 for under-25 female definite interest and 31 for over-25 definite interest. Women are interested in Avatar, but they’re significantly more interested in Holmes at this stage.

James Cameron‘s Avatar will not enter the annals of box-office legend when it opens on 12.18, a seasoned analyst predicted this morning. “It’s looking like it will open in the upper range of all-time December wide releases,” he said, which translates into an opening in the high 60s to low 70s. This obviously means it won’t reach or top $100 million, he said, and it sure as shit “won’t come within ten miles” of The Dark Knight‘s $158 million opening weekend.

“If people are expecting Avatar to open to $100 million, their expectations are wildly unrealistic,” he said. “It doesn’t need to open to anywhere near that, and Fox isn’t expecting it to. Will it open to $30 million and be a disaster? Not a chance. At this point, it’s looking like it’ll open in the upper range of all-time December wide releases.”

That means, to repeat, an opening somewhere in the high $60 million to low $70 million range — possibly a tad higher. That’s going by the two biggest all-time December openings — I Am Legend‘s $77,211,321 opening in December 2007 followed by the $72,629,713 first-weekend haul by Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King when it opened in mid-December 2003.

I had expressed concern that Avatar‘s most recent first-choice tracking seemed to have stalled out at 16, and had asserted that a 30 first choice just prior to opening day seemed necessary for Avatar‘s box-office to match expectations. Not so, this guy replied.

“It doesn’t need a first choice in the 30s even as it reaches release in order to open big,” he asserted. “New Moon‘s overall first choice wasn’t 30 on the day it opened. You can’t just look at a blunt number like overall first choice and make projections. Look at the change in Avatar‘s first choice among males over the last two to three weeks. Look at the change in unaided awareness in Avatar over time — both among males and overall. Those data points are much more instructive than just looking at overall first choice.”

Okay, I said, and thanks. But I’m left with a feeling that Avatar has heat but not serious heat. Not yet anyway. It’s not a monster waiting to happen and it’s not looking like a tank in relation to expectations, but Fox analysts aren’t likely to be all hyperventilating and giggly when they talk to trade reporters over the 11.18 weekend.

I’m detecting geek and teenage interest and not a whole lot more at this stage. A lot of people seem to be saying, “Yeah, I guess I’ll see it but I don’t know about those blue cat-goats with the Pinocchio horse ears.” Mainstream Eloi tend to avoid anything that looks even slightly challenging –the movie with the brightest and most colorful wrapper with the plainest design tends to win — and Avatar looks like something you might have to get used to on some level. It seems rich and dense, like a realm you might need to explore and maybe study a little bit to fully enjoy. That’s not an Eloi magnet factor. They like fast-food movies that they can wolf down right out of the wrapper– no thought, no nothing, just ketchup. They can see that Avatar is no easy-lay Roland Emmerich film. They can tell it’s a sit-down meal.

And it does look like a male geek thing — let’s face it. New Moon girls are not going to be breaking down doors to see this at first. (Maybe when their friends tell them this or that, but not now.) This may sound complacent or trite but the first wave of viewers is most likely going to be led by animation nerds.

My first thought when I looked at this collection of icky Helmut Newton-ish photos (and I’m obviously not calling it a rational or reasonable thought) is that Lindsay Lohan is the devil.

“While running the risk of displaying weaknesses that Pauline Kael would sneer at, I can think of just one instance of having completely reversed my opinion of a film that I had previously weighed in on in print — Stanley Kubrick‘s Barry Lyndon.

“On first viewing, its overall point and meaning eluded me, and I was not able to appreciate anything beyond its pictorial and musical qualities; it was only on second viewing that its staggering, Stroheimesque stature as a corrosive contemplation of the foolishness of most human endeavor became abundantly clear.” — Variety‘s Todd McCarthy in a 10.11.01 piece called “Some Films Are Worth A Second Look.”

I admire In Contention‘s Kris Tapley for sticking his neck out on The Lovely Bones. I have a sense that the Zeligs are turning away from Peter Jackson‘s film but who knows? I’ve got a Lovely Bones screener sitting here, and I intend to watch it again tomorrow.

Tapley had better watch it though. If he isn’t careful he’ll have the rep of someone who just writes about what he likes or greatly respects and therefore isn’t much of an Oscar prognosticator. I’ve had this thrown at me also. All I can say is “Thanks, it means a lot.”