Studio marketing veteran Tom Sherak was elected president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Tuesday night, succeding Sid Ganis. Sherak is one of the nicest men I’ve ever known in any industry or realm. He was a guest at a film class I moderated back in ’97, and the crowd loved him because, as one fellow put it, “he sounds like Joe Pesci.” Sherak is one of the smartest and shrewdest guys out there, but he talks like a neighborhood hardware-store manager. A trust-and-comfort, common-sense type.

HE reader Domenico Salvaggio received the following email from Team Avatar early this morning: “We apologize for the inconvenience, but due to overwhelming demand [for Friday’s free Avatar preview], our RSVP site experienced technical difficulties. As a result of the crash you must re-select a screening time. Please note you may not get the original time you selected. Please click here and choose a new screening time.”

“I have to re-register at 3 am?,” Domenico wrote. “Are we in the early 1990’s? Avatar is supposed to be the harbinger of the future bleeding-edge tech and the system they used to set up the advance screening is a bona-fide Mickey Mouse operation? I don’t blame Cameron, but on some level the guy who professes to be the King of the World and the gateway to cinema-of-the-future needs to re-evaluate his operation.

“Right now Avatar has zero awareness among the laypeople. Only the geeks (such as I) have been championing the project…but if he pulls this dick-move at the 11th hour, he might piss off his core fan group. That kind of backlash 20th Century Fox can’t afford. I feel cheated and I feel like I wasted my time. I structured my whole day around getting those online tickets!

“Yes, I re-registered and got my desired time but only because I was lucky enough to be awake at 3:00 am! What if I woke up tomorrow morning and my desired time of the 6 pm showing @ the Universal Citywalk IMAX in LA was no longer available? (I can’t go to later showings because I have a wedding reception @ 7:00 pm). Or worse, what if it got sold out completely when I woke up and was shit-screwed out of luck? Sorry, fanboy.”

This issue could be handled very easily. The 20th Century Fox techies responsible for the site crash would submit to a minor form of public corporal punishment somewhere on the Fox lot. Stocks and pillories, I’m thinking, but only for an hour and only during their lunch break. Fox shoots a video of this, and then posts it on the Avatar site.

I heard this morning from Erica no-last-name, a 21 year-old student from Charlotte, North Carolina. Being an intelligent and committed Avatard, she took issue with my 8.17 report (“Room at the Inn”) about how the Avatar tickets were snapped up faster in big cities than in outlying areas, and especially what that implied about awareness levels.

“Don’t assume everyone outside of NY and LA is oblivious to Hollywood doings,” she wrote. “I know how these places look from the outside (middle-class, popcorn-eating audiences flocking to stupid blockbusters) but Charlotte does have a little art society inside it, even though we might be in the minority. I have two reserved tickets to an Avatar screening here in Charlotte, and I know more people who are going also. Not only that, but I’m trying to sell the shit out of this thing because I truly believe in the epic-ness of it.”

To which I replied: “Yeah, you’re from an upscale-urban small-college town…naturally! Any semi-educated, reasonably well-travelled American realizes, of course, that the American hinterland is sprinkled with small and mid-sized towns and college communities of a blue-green liberal bent. Oasis-like havens with nice people, cool cafes, bookstores, nice walking-around areas, non-Blockbuster DVD stores, second-hand clothing stores and pretty women with nice pedicures.

“Tupelo, Mississippi, to name one example, is generally regarded as a rural Southern city with all the attendant shortcomings, but it’s got a nice, old-town vibe here and there, and everyone you meet is polite and kindly. Not my kind of town architecturally but a decent place to hang for a day or two. So yeah, I know the score and thank God that the spirit of rural America isn’t entirely ruled by Walmarts and junk-food outlets and red-state Glenn Beck attitudes.

“What I was saying in the piece — or asking, really — is whether outlying areas are as attuned as big cities to ‘viral happenings’ like the Avatar free-seat giveaway.

“As I looked over the Avatar site at the end of the first day (i.e., two days ago) that had reports about which theatres in which cities were sold out (or more precisely requested-out), the general pattern was that the big-city IMAX theatres filled up right away but that scores of theatres in the rural and suburban areas still had seats open.

“The obvious conclusion is that rural/suburbans (a) have fewer hardcore fans of CG scifi/alternate-reality event movies and (b) aren’t as wired into what’s happening as big-city types. That’s all I was really saying.”

Rep. Barney Frank, bless him, understands the blunt-spoken, suffer-no-fools HE spirit and vice versa. Asked during a town-hall healthcare discussion in Dartmouth why he supports President Obama’s “Nazi policy,” Frank replied as follows: “On what planet do you spend most of your time? [What you’re saying is] vile, contemptible nonsense. Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining-room table.”

I wasn’t even invited to see David McKenzie‘s Spread, a nookie-and-moral-reckoning drama with Ashton Kutcher and Anne Heche. It opened last Friday and got killed by the critics. But Andrew O’Hehir‘s Salon review made me want to see it anyway. So I’m thinking about buying a ticket. Naah, I can’t do that. It would hurt too much if it sucks. But maybe I can get a screener from whomever.

“The indie-film hipoisie are likely to spurn it,” O’Hehir wrote, “[because] there’s no Diablo Cody nudge-nudge-wink-wink quality to Jason Dean Hall‘s screenplay, and it doesn’t exactly reverberate with wrenching, low-budget sincerity either.

‘But Mackenzie is a consummate stylist, one of British cinema’s emerging 21st-century talents, who has displayed a remarkable ability to make interesting movies that get in their own way and never reach wide audiences. [And] with Spread, Mackenzie follows the London-to-L.A. flight path of many British directors before him, and focuses his withering Scottish gaze on the soulless sexuality of the Southern California rich and wannabe-rich.

“The results suggest a mixture of early Paul Verhoeven and Tony Richardson‘s legendary film version of Evelyn Waugh‘s The Loved One. So, yeah, Spread is too clever by half to be an actual hit, while also lacking snob appeal. Too bad about that. Still, if the very funny, very dark and very precise thing that Kutcher and Mackenzie pull off here floats your boat, then getcher tickets right now — or just wait six weeks, because this one’s likely to go right through the theatrical ecosystem and onto DVD lickety-split.”

Despite Alejandro Gonzalez-Inarritu‘s Biutiful being listed by the IMDB as attached to Focus Features, a rep tells me it’s not a Focus Features domestic title and that the film doesn’t have a domestic distributor just yet. She added that CAA’s Beth Swofford is handling all requests. I called and left a message, etc. I also asked Inarritu directly…zip.

Javier Bardem , Alejandro Gonzalez-Inarritu.

The loglines — “a man involved in illegal dealing is confronted by his childhood friend, who is now a policeman” plus “a man (Bardem) who has recently lost a lover” — and the Barcelona shooting location indicates a smallish Spanish-language character drama. Javier Bardem is the star but I don’t even know if he’s the cop or the dealer. (Anyone?) Sounds like a 2010 release with a possible Cannes debut (AGI is one of their favorites) next May. So much for the ’09 Oscar Balloon, which was only based on spitball presumption in the first place.

Matt Zoller Seitz‘s video compilation of luscious, lip-smacking Quentin Tarantino dialogue highlights from the last 17 years is great stuff. It makes me nostalgic for the good old pre-Inglourious Basterds days. And it reminds that there’s nothing in Basterds that compares to these gems. Choice Basterds dialogue in a nutshell: “So it seems, to my great disappointment, zat you are not telling me everyzing dere is to know. Certain hints and indications have aroused my suspicions. And by the way, may I have another glass of your delicious milk?”

Seitz writes: “From Abernathy in Grindhouse describing how having sex with a dude named Cecil would rule out the possibility of being his girlfriend, to the title character of Kill Bill Vol. 2 defining the essence of superheroes as a prelude to revealing why Superman does not fit the paradigm, to Jules and Vincent in Pulp Fiction debating the implied carnal intent of a foot massage and the relative merits of pigs and dogs, the director’s films prefer verbal spectacle to the physical kind.

“Tarantino doesn’t just explore language’s capacity to reveal and conceal motives and personality, he shows how people pick words and phrases (consciously or subconsciously) in order to define themselves and others, and describe the reality they inhabit (or would like to inhabit). Even low-key and seemingly unimportant exchanges are as carefully choreographed as boxing matches. Clever flurries of interrogatory jabs are often blocked by witty responses; the course of conflict can be shifted by deft rhetorical footwork that re-frames the terms of debate.”

I missed Peter Howell‘s 8.5 scoop about the Tokyo Film Festival shunning The Cove. The Toronto Star critic got it the day before from Cove director Louie Psihoyos during a Toronto promotional visit. Psihoyos had been told that very day — August 4th — that Tokyo wasn’t taking The Cove. He said he’d been warned by a Tokyo festival director that the film might not make the cut for political reasons.

Howell tried to get a reaction from the Tokyo people…nothing. “It seemed like a done deal then,” Howell informs, “and I haven’t seen anything either online or off that contradicts my Aug. 5 report.”

So now the ball really is in Alejandro Gonzalez-Inarritu‘s court. If the festival changes its mind about The Cove, fine. But if not, as I wrote earlier today, Inarritu’s serving as jury president will be seen, at the very least, as an unfortunate gesture. It will indicate that he’s more or less down with the festival’s decision. Or is certainly not disputing it in any meaningful way. Definitely an unseemly situation. He should really think this one over. What’s right is right.

Update: In Contention‘s Kris Tapley has pushed this thread along and contributed his two cents.

It’s such a Guatamelan sweatbox outside I almost don’t want to go into Manhattan for screenings. It’s that bad. I can roll with Palm Springs heat. Bone-dry cactus heat is actually kind of pleasant if you’ve got a drink in your hand and an air-conditioned store to pop into when you need a break. But jungle-sweat Eighth Avenue heat is awful. You’re walking down the street and going “oh, man” with every other step. It affects your attitude, the sharpness of your thinking…everything. You feel two or three steps away from suffocation while standing on the West 4th street subway platform. Imagine what New Yorkers went through before air-conditioning came along.

The talk about MGM being in desperate financial condition and on its last legs has been going on for so many months that today’s news about Harry Sloan having surrendered his CEO position is almost a “yeah, so?” The reins will now be held by motion picture group chief Mary Parent and chief financial officer Bedi Singh. Sloan will continue as ceremonial chairman. I don’t even know why I’m posting this. Strictly Nikki Finke/Sharon Waxman/Kim Masters/Anne Thompson territory.

“Sloan, who was named to the CEO post in October 2005, was a disaster after inheriting MGM’s killer $3.7B debt and couldn’t tell the truth about how bad the studio’s situation really was,” Finke wrote this morning. “I hear he was naturally upset about being fired as CEO ‘but has come to terms with his removal.’ Parent and Singh, meanwhile, have kept MGM afloat by making a slate of movies with financial partners. I hear Mary Parent could have had walked out the door with her contract paid off. But she decided to stay and keep her fingers crossed. ‘Everyone’s linked arms and we’re full steam ahead,’ an MGM insider tells me. ‘We’ve got a fighting chance.'”

“We must have a public option,” President Obama said in one of his weekly addresses. “Must,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reminds. “But now he’s changed his mind on that apparently.” So now we’ll have “no public option, no single payer, no national health plan. Maybe some insurance reforms, maybe not. Depends on what else the Republicans want, probably.” This is damn disappointing.

A crudely written post on a blog called Racialicious makes what seems like a fair point about District 9, claiming that the subplot involving Nigerian gangsters has a racist thrust to it. My impression was that director Neill Blomkamp was just going for the usual gritty/scuzzy venality that all bad guys are obliged to exude in futuristic/sci-fi films these days. But given the film’s racial apartheid metaphor I can see how some might be irate about some of the gross particulars and associations.

HE reader Sabina (i.e., “DeafBrownTrashPunk”), who sent the piece along, claims that the outrage of the author, Nicole Stamp, over the Nigerian thugs killing and eating aliens (or “prawns”) is a racist imagining. In fact, a 4.9.09 BBC article reported that Albino Africans have been kidnapped and killed by gangs because some”witch doctor[s]” believe that albino human parts are magical and offer good health benefits.

The article said there was an Albino sanctuary built to protect Albino African kids from being kidnapped and cannibalized. Here’s another BBC article about the same thing, published a month earlier.