I was amused at how chief N.Y. Times critics Tony Scott and Manohla Dargis gave the task of reviewing Chris Smith‘s Collapse (which opens today in Manhattan) not to second-stringer Stephen Holden but third-stringer Jeanette Catsoulis. It’s only the scariest and most riveting doc of the year — a theoretical portrait of the world’s end that will suck the air out of whatever room you happen to be sitting in. (Last week I called it “the thinking man’s 2012“).

Catsoulis is, of course, an excellent writer. But woe to the film looking for full-out Times consideration that gets reviewed by her, however smartly or perceptively. A Catsoulis review is a kiss of death. A black spot handed to a film distributor by Ben Gun or Long John Silver. By giving Collapse to Catsoulis, Scott-Dargis have essentially said to Times readers, “This is a fringe doc…an in-and-outer that mainstream audiences should perhaps ignore…not fully deserving of our attention.” In other words they read it wrong.

Sidney Lumet‘s The Verdict turns on a bullshit premise– an attorney can’t refuse a reasonable cash settlement if that’s what his/her client is looking to get — but I love it anyway for the following reasons:

In no particular order: (a) the Boston-Irish flavorings, (b) Jack Warden, (c) that straight-whiskey, pinball-machine opening, (d) Edward Binns, (e) James Mason‘s face when he realizes his case has just collapsed in the face of Caitlin Costello Price’s testimony, (f) Charlotte Rampling, and (g) those portions of Paul Newman‘s performance that don’t overplay the suffering and sanctimony. (Example: when he tells that dirty Irish joke to a bunch of rummies.)

Richard Kelly‘s The Box, which opens today, was shooting in the Boston area two years ago; that in itself should tell you it has problems. The failing-grade RT reviews (44% hoi-polloi, 25% creme de la creme) are another. It’s Friday morning and the film is all but dead in the water — let’s face it. WB marketers knew it was a ruptured duck ages ago; that’s one reason why they took so long to open it.

So why did Media Rights Capital agree to fund the film after reading Kelly’s script? They had to know he’s not McG or Michael Bay, that his rep is that of a fringe-type guy who caught a wave off the video sales of Donnie Darko, and that he tends to make trippy head-bender flicks with labrynthian, multi-layered plots — any film geek could have told them that.

So there was no way he was going to make a quietly creepy, less-is-more, Ingmar Bergmanesque thriller out of the simple 1970 Richard Matheson short story that later became a Twilight Zone episode in the mid ’80s. (Which is what I would have preferred.) They had to know Kelly would take the story into the outer stratosphere. They also had to know that no matter what they may say in production meetings, brainy cult directors don’t make films for the Eloi.

The main problem, to go by just about every review, is that Kelly took a simple premise (if you could get rich by pushing a button that will cause a total stranger’s death, would you push it?) and loaded it down with waay too many oddball tangents and byzantine plot elements and metaphorical layers. In other words, he did exactly what any semi-aware, semi-comatose Media Rights Capital execs could have easily predicted would have happened when the project was green-lighted in early ’07.

I love Kelly’s stuff myself but he’s not “box office” — even his friends agree he’s not that. He’s off on his own beam. The problem with Kelly isn’t what he writes or directs; it’s the fact that the budgets for his films so far haven’t been set as realistically proportionate.

What is the point of buying and caring for the original crop-duster plane from North by Northwest if someone in the food chain (yourself or the guy you bought it from) decided to change the engine nose to a robin’s egg blue color and paint the wings a fresh shade of light amber? The original plane was a plain old brown crop-duster out of central casting so why prettify it?

Bill Knauz and his slightly prettified NxNW biplane.

The Real McCoy

I’ll tell you why. Because people like Bill Knauz, a respectable Lake Forest, Illinois, resident who bought the plane five years ago, don’t respect originality or artifact aesthetics or film culture. They may think they do but they don’t.

Which is what a lot of hinterland guys are like. They call themselves devoted collectors of the highest order but they can’t resist sprucing their up historical possessions a bit. You can’t take the original Citizen Kane wooden Rosebud sled and paint it purple and red — that’s vandalism. The mind-blower for me is that LakeForester.com’s Linda Blaser wrote a profile of Knauz and didn’t even mention the desecration. You can’t deal with hinterlanders. They don’t get it and they never will.

Robert Zemeckis‘s A Christmas Carol “turns a 19th-century morality tale into a 21st-century funhouse ride, replete with digital greasepaint and 3-D gaping,” says the Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell. “Look past all the techno tinsel, and the uplift is the same as always. You might even enjoy the 3-D faux snow landing in your lap.

“The bad news is that all this glitter is not gold. This is the third film by Zemeckis using motion-capture technology, the others being The Polar Express and Beowulf, and he has yet to prove the worth of a dubious hybrid that is not quite live action and not quite animation.

“Indeed, with A Christmas Carol he comes closest to disproving his own strenuous arguments in favor of the process, and 3-D only serves to further gild the lily. He’s taken an immortal story and an A-list cast – including Jim Carrey, Colin Firth and Gary Oldman – and nearly smothered them with the digital equivalent of cellophane.

“It’s like taking a Christmas wreath and dipping it in wax or laminating a Christmas card in plastic. Zemeckis risks creating another Yule ghoul: the Ghost of Christmas Without Soul.”

More than seven months after its debut last March at South by Southwest, I’ve finally seen Scott Teems‘ That Evening Sun, an exceptionally well-honed, low-budget regional drama with a lead performance by Hal Holbrook that feels lean, crafty and country-plain — clearly in the same cut-the-b.s., less-is-more realm as Robert Duvall‘s performance in Tender Mercies or Billy Bob Thornton‘s in Sling Blade. By my sights Holbrook’s work certainly deserves a Best Actor nomination.

I mean, if you can’t stand up and salute an actor like Holbrook, 84 and going strong and delivering perhaps the most emotional and pugnacious and flavorful performance of his long screen career, who can or should you nominate? He was Oscar-nominated last year for his moving supporting performance in Into The Wild; there’s clearly more where that came from.

Teems’ script enhances considerably by pruning Holbrook’s dialogue, that of a flinty old cuss named Abner Meecham, down to the bare essentials. Everything Holbrook says is a variation on a basic theme, to wit: “I’m an old man and I haven’t much time left. This house and property are mine and my memories haunt it, and this is where I want to live until such time that my body gives out and my life ends. Because it’s my right, dammit, and because a man is entitled to end his life the way he sees fit.”

Teems’ screenplay doesn’t mince words or beat around the bush. And it’s a pleasure to watch Holbrook trigger Meecham in an agreeably tough way, playing a tenacious old coot who’s never less than honest or sensible or clear-headed with other characters, or with the audience for that matter. So yeah, I’ve fallen in line with the rest of the crowd, I’m afraid. That Evening Sun is a fulfilling low-key pleasure, and Holbrook rules.

I caught it last night at a Talking Movies screening at Florence Gould Hall at 55 East 59th Street. Jeffrey Lyons and Roberta Burrows introduced and then co-hosted a post-screening interview with Holbrook, Teems and costar Ray McKinnon. The above video is worth listening to for a passage in which Holbrook explains that his late father in law (i.e., the dad of his wife Dixie Carter) is/was pretty much the inspiration for the Meecham character.

I also loved a line about acting that Sidney Lumet passed along to Holbrook during the filming of The Group, to wit: “Audiences can read an actor’s mind.”

Here’s an excellent interview piece with Holbrook by Variety critic and Moving Picture blogspot host Joe Leydon. It’s called “After all these years, Hal Holbrook still doesn’t know just how damn good he is. But he’s learning.”

Holbrook will attened an early-evening public screening tonight of That Evening Sun at Cinema 1. He will also submit to another q & a.

While I have concerns about aspects of Michael Hoffman‘s The Last Station (Sony Classics, 12.4), I certainly understand and agree with the Helen Mirren-for-Best Actress thing. Her performance as Sofya Tolstoy is a little florid, but I think that’s appropriate given who and what she is and what she’s up against. Her spirit is infectious, intxoicating.

The long-awaited Bluray of Michael Mann‘s Heat (Warner Home Video, 11.10) lacks that Bluray schwing. Here I am sounding like a plebian again, but dammit, you buy a Bluray version of a film you already own on DVD because you want enhancement — something with finer detail, more color gradation, sharper focus — a more robust pop-through quality. That’s what you pay for, right?

Diane Venora, Al Pacino in Michael Mann’s Heat.

The Heat Bluray offers a slight sense of enhancement, okay, but there’s nothing all that “extra” about it. The instant I popped it in last night I said to myself, “Oh…this again.” That’s because it looks almost exactly the same on my 42-inch plasma as the Heat Special Edition DVD looked on my 36″ Sony analog back in West Hollywood.

If I didn’t understand and respect what Mann has approved here — he wants a theatrical look and/or doesn’t believe in tweaking what a film looked like to begin with — and if I was in a pissy-type mood, I’d call this Bluray a bit of a burn.

As DVD Beaver’s Gary Tooze puts in his just-up review, “The Heat Blu-ray presentation “is significantly ahead of the DVD counterparts but doesn’t exhibit the demonstrative depth and detail that many have come to expect from this new format.”

The Heat Bluray is a very handsome and honest presentation of how the movie looked on the big screen under the finest of circumstances. There’s obviously nothing “wrong” with that — shot on film, looks like film, etc. I guess I’m just a Blanche Dubois type where Blurays are concerned — “I don’t want realism, I want magic!”

You know what does look significantly enhanced and more visually exciting than its previous DVD version? The Planes, Trains & Automobiles “Those Aren’t Pillows!” special edition DVD that came out on 10.20. I know the previous DVD very well and this, played on my 42-inch plasma, looks very nice. And it’s not even a Bluray.

So in a Pepsi-challenge battle with the Heat Bluray, PTA wins. I’m sorry, but it’s more pleasing to the eye.

I read Armond White‘s absolute corker of a Precious review yesterday afternoon as I was rushing to the L train and a 5 pm appointment in town, etc. I knew it would be all the online rage and of course it is that now, but everyone knew that White-the-contrarian would go for the kill on this one, especially with the Oprah Winfrey connection. Is White regarded as such a kneejerk trasher of popular liberal-minded entertainments that the spectre of a brilliant African-American critic obliterating Precious won’t count? I wonder.

“Shame on Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey for signing on as air-quote executive producers of Precious,” he began. “After this post-hip-hop freak show wowed Sundance last January, it now slouches toward Oscar ratification thanks to its powerful friends.Winfrey and Perry had no hand in the actual production of Precious, yet the movie must have touched some sore spot in their demagogue psyches.

“They’ve piggybacked their reps as black success stories hoping to camouflage Precious‘ con job — even though it’s more scandalous than their own upliftment trade. Perry and Winfrey naively treat Precious‘ exhibition of ghetto tragedy and female disempowerment as if it were raw truth. It helps contrast and highlight their achievements as black American paradigms — self-respect be damned.

“Precious is meant to be enjoyed as a Lady Bountiful charity event. And look: Oprah,TV’s Lady Bountiful, joins the bandwagon. It continues her abusefetish and self-help nostrums (though the scene where Precious carries her baby past a “Spay and Neuter Your Pets” sign is sick).

“Problem is, Perry,Winfrey and director Lee Daniels‘ pityparty bait-and-switches our social priorities.

“Personal pathology gets changed into a melodrama of celebrity-endorsed self-pity. The con artists behind Precious seize this Obama moment in which racial anxiety can be used to signify anything anybody can stretch it to mean. And Daniels needs this humorless condescension (Hollywood’s version of benign neglect) to obscure his lurid purposes.

“Sadly, Mike Leigh‘s emotionally exact and socially perceptive films (Secrets and Lies, All or Nothing, Happy Go Lucky) that answer contemporary miserablism with genuine social and spiritual insight have not penetrated Daniels,Winfrey, Perry’s consciousness — nor of the Oscarheads now championing Precious. They’ve also ignored Jonathan Demme‘s moving treatment of the lingering personal and communal tragedy of slavery in Beloved.

“Both Leigh and Demme understand the spiritual challenges to despair and their richly detailed performances testify to that fact. Gabby Sidibe and Mo’Nique give two-note performances: dumb and innocent, crazy and evil. Monique’s do-rag doesn’t convey depths within herself, nor does Mariah Carey‘s fright wig. Daniels’ cast lacks that uncanny mix of love and threat that makes Next Day Air so August Wilson-authentic.

“Worse than Precious itself was the ordeal of watching it with an audience full of patronizing white folk at the New York Film Festival, then enduring its media hoodwink as a credible depiction of black American life. A scene such as the hippopotamus-like teenager climbing a K-2 incline of tenement stairs to present her newborn, incest-bred baby to her unhinged virago matriarch, might have been met howls of skeptical laughter at Harlem’s Magic Johnson theater.

“Black audiences would surely have seen the comedy in this ludicrous, overloaded situation, whereas too many white film habitues casually enjoy it for the sense of superiority — and relief — it allows them to feel. Some people like being conned.”

One awfully nice thing about pets is that you don’t have to look your best for them. They’ll take you with your hair combed or scattered, pants on or pants off, showered or not, with or without a manicure. They’ll put out the same you-and-me-forever vibe as long as you’re mellow and affectionate and put food on the plate. And they won’t walk into the room and say, “I’m really sorry but I just met this cat lover in the other building who makes me feel more secure.”

Aura — Thursday, 11.5, 11:05 am.

In a brief 11.5 riff about the Weinstein Co.’s poster for Tom Ford‘s A Single Man, In Contention‘s Guy Lodge wrote, “Call me cynical, but are they trying to hide the fact that it’s about a gay man?” Gee, I don’t know…maybe? Movie Marketing 101 says that you always conceal or downplay the gay element contained in any film, whether it be in the story or lead character or whatever. The Weinsteiners did the usual thing.

But it’s surprising that they didn’t try and convey the film’s selling point, which for me is its sense of taste and restraint, a feeling of early ’60s elegance, an extravagant and yet muted visual mood. A Single Man is about a gay man, sure, but more precisely about a sad and spiritually deflated one, and while it pulsates with a certain high-toned homoeroticism, it’s really more about rediscovering a yen for life — that sense of want, expectation and delectation that keeps us all going.

I would have tried for a kind of Michelangelo Antonioni vibe if I’d designed the poster. An image that would have suggested a film that delivers a gently classy atmosphere that doesn’t “hide” the gayish current as much as make it palatable and intriguing for viewers of all persuasions.

I was thinking to myself as I walked along First Avenue in the East Village last night that I really love walking around Manhattan. (As long as it’s not windy or bitter cold, I mean.) And it hit me that if you’re not feeling really happy about the relatively routine aspects of your life — about the simple joys of being alive and healthy and mobile and being able to dodge a cab at the last millisecond — then you’re missing something very basic.

Too many people look to highs and crescendos and big career accomplishments in life as the primary definers of happiness or fulfillment. I’ve just been through a stirring and delicious adventure with a beautiful blonde over the past month or so — definitely one for the record books. But I honestly felt more spiritual satisfaction last night on First Avenue than from anything that came out of the hormonal and spiritual intensity of the last four weeks. It’s not the riding of the great waves that matters the most (and I’m saying this as not just a lover of breathtaking women but also boogie-board surfing) — it’s the way you feel as you’re sitting on the beach and watching the waves at sunset, right before you roll up the towel and head for the car.

This feeling of serenity and contentment is what A Single Man puts across at the very end, and it’s really quite wonderful.