Last night I saw Joel and Nash Edgerton‘s The Square (Apparition, 4.6), a James M. Cain-like noir in a low-rent, not-terribly-bright, mullet-wearing Australian way. The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mate. I’ll hold my review for now, but the timing of the release is fair game for discussion, I think.

The Square was shot in ’07 and released in Australia in the summer of ’08. Apparition picked it up at last year’s South by Southwest and then waited for the right moment. I don’t want to sound like a jerk in Apparition’s eyes, but I think that an audience is missing something when watching a nearly three-year-old film in a first-run theatre.

I’m not saying The Square is a “dated ” film — it’s not. (Except for the fact that two blue-collar male characters wear ghastly 1980s mullets.) But there was an original spark that went into the filming of it — a spark and a climatorial vibe that had a lot to do with the specific conditions of life on the planet earth back then. And I think you lose the vitality of that chemical composition when you wait three years to show it. And I sensed a faint weathered factor as I was watching it. That or simply knowing it was shot in ’07 affected my perception.

Wine improves with age but movies — a living, breathing, moving-train art form — don’t. It’s not always true, but you often sense on some level the lack of mollecular immediacy and freshness in a film that was shot 18 months or two years before viewing. And you can really sense if it was shot three years earlier. Life’s particulars change in small and imperceptible ways as the months roll along, and then eventually they begin to stand out in stronger relief.

I don’t know what the rule of thumb needs to be, but it’s best if you see a film within a year or so of principal photography. That way it feels like a movie that belongs to the here-and-now. The initial September ’08 showings of The Hurt Locker, which was shot in ’07, felt more vital on some level than it did upon the commercial opening in June ’09, I can tell you. I’m sure there are dozens of examples.

I get that Apparition needs product and that they fell in love with the Edgerton brothers because suddenly these guys are in vogue. I saw Joel play Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire at BAM.

I agree with the guy who says “no handouts…you have to work for everything you get in life.” Damn straight. But the guys in this video are vermin — the absolute antithesis of the compassionate behavior that a certain wandering Hebrew advocated in his sermons.

It’s a given that the elite tend to live healthier lives than the bottom-of-the-barrel K-Mart crowd. And yet by today’s standards, Clark Gable — the one-time King of Hollywood — lived a much more self-destructive life than your typical 2010 addict of whatever social class. For most of his 59 years Gable smoked tens of thousands of unfiltered cigarettes and swilled enough booze to kill a bull elephant. It’s a miracle that he lasted as long as he did.

“Gable died in Los Angeles, California on November 16, 1960,” his Wikipedia bio says. “It happened from a heart attack ten days after suffering a severe coronary thrombosis.

“There was much speculation that Gable’s physically demanding role in John Huston‘s The Misfits contributed to his sudden death soon after filming was completed. In an interview with Louella Parsons, published soon after Gable’s death, Kay Gable was quoted as saying “it wasn’t the physical exertion that killed him [but] the horrible tension…the eternal waiting, waiting, waiting. He waited around forever, for everybody. He’d get so angry that he’d just go ahead and do anything to keep occupied.”

“Marilyn Monroe said that she and Kay had become close during the filming and would refer to Clark as ‘our man’ while Arthur Miller, observing Gable on location, noted that ‘no hint of affront ever showed on his face.’

“Others have blamed Gable’s crash diet before filming began. The 6’1” Gable weighed about 190 pounds (86.2 kg) at the time of Gone with the Wind, but by his late 50s, he weighed 230 pounds (104.3 kg). To get in shape for The Misfits, he dropped to 195 lbs (88 kg).”

And the comes the big “tell,” almost like an anecdotal aside…

“In addition, Gable was in poor health from years of heavy smoking (three packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day over thirty years, as well as cigars and at least two bowlfuls of pipe tobacco a day). Until the late 1950s he had been a heavy drinker, especially of whisky.”

How is this just-released Predators trailer substantially different from the short teaser reel that producer Robert Rodriguez and director Nimrod Attal previewed at South by Southwest on 3.12?

My 3.13 commentary, to also repeat: “I’d be into Predators (20th Century Fox, 7.9) if I was even half-persuaded that it’ll be to the original Predator what James Cameron‘s Aliens was to Ridley Scott‘s Alien — i.e., faster, more intense, emotionally grounded, a general uptick. But of course, that can’t be. Not with Rodriguez’s B-movie aesthetic defining the perimeters.”

If anyone has scripts of The Voices, L.A. Rex, By Way of Helena, The Days Before

When Corruption Was King and Motor City, please send ’em this way. Thanks.

Fess Parker of the soft and kindly voice died today at age 85. Playing Davy Crockett made him a legend among boomers, and made him rich (or at least started him on the road to more riches), and cast an easy, friendly glow upon everything he said and did for the rest of his life. Some guys have all the luck and the modesty.

Parker became a political conservative and a friend of Ronald Reagan‘s when he got older, and that’s not cool in my book. But he projected such a soothing vibe that it was hard to think of him in a negative light.

My favorite Parker performance was in Don Siegel‘s Hell Is For Heroes, which costarred Steve McQueen. He was also strong and compelling in three Disney features — The Great Locomotive Chase (’56), Westward Ho, the Wagons! (’56) and Old Yeller (’57). And he delivered a memorable supporting performance in Them! (’54), the classic giant-ant movie.

Parker’s gentle southern accent originated in Texas, where he was born in 1924. I never knew until today that he was the victim of a “road-rage knifing” in 1946. Or that his birthday, 8.16, was only one day removed from Crockett’s on 8.17.

Parker was discovered by actor Adolphe Menjou — an especially despicable conservative said to have encouraged and supported the persecution of alleged Hollywood lefties and former Communists during the late ’40s and ’50s. Menjou reportedly met Parker in Texas, urged him to go to Hollywood, introduced him to his agent, etc.

I have to say I didn’t care for Santa Barbara’s Fess Parker hotel when I stayed there three or four years ago. Too big and sprawling and nouveau riche-y — too tailored to the tastes of people with not much taste.

The Wrap‘s Brent Lang doesn’t understand why Taylor Lautner is being paid $7.5 million to star in Universal’s Stretch Armstrong when other young bucks of the forest — Robert Pattinson, Shia Labeouf, Zac Efron — made do with less when they were in Lautner’s starting-out position.

The consternation is due to the fact that while Lautner may be cute, he’s never opened a film. And the stats show that so far Twi-harders haven’t supported movies that Twilight costars have appeared in off-campus.

I explained the Lautner problem (or complication or what-have-you) in a 7.23 Comic-Con piece. In a nutshell, he’s not that deep and he has a weird upturned dog nose.

“Lautner is clearly the most ambitiously press-friendly among the three New Moon cosytars,” I wrote. “While Stewart and Pattinson did their usual usual — i.e., giving answers that suggested they’re a lot more complex and aloof and thoughtful than their participation in movies based on the Twilight series might suggest. It’s the age-old ‘I’ll do this but only if I can answer questions like Marlon Brando‘ routine.

“But Lautner, who has a kind of Cyrano nose in a bee-stung mode, exhibited the personality of a publicist or a glad-hander. He clearly enjoys smiling and wants everyone to like him. He could be the next Regis Philbin if he wanted to go there.

“If I was Lautner I would have the schnozz re-shaped. I’m sorry but it’s an On The Waterfront longshoreman’s nose — Elia Kazan might have cast him as one of Johnny Friendly‘s henchmen if he were heavier — or a nose belonging to a Russian wheat-farmer. If Lautner had come up through the ranks of old 1930s Hollywood studio system the moguls would have said ‘cute kid but fix the nose.’ If he’d arrived in the ’50s he would have been relegated to character parts — they’d never let him kiss Doris Day or Janet Leigh with that oddly-shaped growth in the middle of his face.

The fact that no one else in the universe has even mentioned this, not even as an aside, shows what an (d)evolved multi-cultural world we now live in. A guy with no real inner force who looks like a serf from the Ukranian wheat fields can now be a major marquee draw.

You can tell right away that Ryan Murphy‘s Eat Pray Love is, at the very least, decently written (by Murphy and Jennifer Salt), engagingly acted (Julia Roberts in her Madwoman of Chaillot mode) and beautifully shot by Robert Richardson. Apparently a quality chick flick. Especially with the travelicious eye candy (Italy, Indonesia, India), plus James Franco, Javier Bardem, Billy Crudup, Richard Jenkins, Viola Davis, etc. Looks like a hit…maybe.

It took Murphy…what, three years to get out of movie jail after Running With Scissors? Good for him, must have taken some doing. Movie-jail terms tend to last four to five years — a year to eighteen months to realize and then face up to the fact that you’re actually in movie jail, and then three-plus years of political maneuvering in order to extricate yourself.

Dollars to donuts Expendables director-writer-star Sylvester Stallone drew the original rough art for this just-released one-sheet. I believe this because I used to indirectly work for Stallone, believe it or not. I was a poorly paid employee of Bobby Zarem and Dick Delson, who were Stallone’s personal p.r. reps during the Rambo II phase in ’85 and ’86. And I saw some conceptual poster art that Stallone had drawn for possible use in the teaser poster. And it had the exact same skull image, only with a bowie knife and a green beret.

Hey, Tim Palen — am I right or am I right? Stallone roughed it out and your team applied the finishing touches…n’est-ce pas?

Like the poster says, The Expendables, which has no website, will be released by Lionsgate on 8.13.10. We’re all hoping it’ll play during the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. I’m guessing it won’t be part of the regular festival, but market screenings are likely. If this happens, one way or another I’ll get myself in.

I’m into seeing Hubble 3D, which, being a Warner Bros. film, I naturally wasn’t invited to see at a press screening. And now Lou Lumenick is reporting that the Leonardo DiCaprio-narrated doc will only play a lousy one-week run at the Lincoln Square IMAX and with only one 8 am showing per day because because the tepid and tiresome Alice in Wonderland needs the prime-time screening slots. Hubble 3D‘s exposure will be a bit more liberal at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City.