I spoke this morning with Greenberg star Ben Stiller inside a semi-quiet restaurant (i.e., not really quiet enough) adjacent to the Waldorf Astoria’s main lobby. It went well, perhaps of my certainty that Stiller delivers the performance of his career in Noah Baumbach‘s intensely granular film about midlife stagnation and L.A. loneliness. No ambiguity in your head means calm and clarity.

Greenberg (Focus Features, 3.19 limited) is easily the most intriguing film of the new year, and more than worth a tumble. It doesn’t exactly “entertain,” and yet it does — it’s just operating in a low-key way that’s almost entirely about observation, and without a single false note. If your girlfriend doesn’t like it (and she may not), you may want to think about dumping her. Seriously. Because Greenberg is about what a lot of 30ish and 40ish people who haven’t achieved fame and fortune are going through, or will go through. It’s dryly amusing at times, but it’s not kidding around.

Greenberg is a fascinating character-driven drama about Roger Greenberg (Stiller), a neurotic 41 year-old who’s caretaking his younger brother’s Los Angeles home while the brother and his family are on a vacation in Vietnam. It’s mainly about a curious attract-repel relationship between Greenberg and the brother’s gangly, emotionally vulnerable assistant (Greta Gerwig), and an amiable ex-musician friend (Rhys Ifans) with whom Greenberg shares various confessions/reflections.

Things don’t “happen” as much as we learn more and more about Greenberg’s internals. The basic drill is that he’s become stuck in a moderately unhappy fall-back position in his life, and is close to astonished that things haven’t turned out as well as he thought they might when he was younger. He blew a shot at being in a successful rock band in his 20s, we’re told, and is now working as a carpenter in Brooklyn. Not miserable but neurotic and fickle, and certainly not content.

Is Greenberg funny? In a LQTM sense, yeah, but to most people LQTM isn’t what they go to movies for. I do, however. I was quietly smirking at Greenberg the whole time, having a quiet little blast with it. And then it grew on me the second time. I didn’t realize how sublime the ending is until I saw it again. That’s my fault.

What is clear from the start is that for Stiller’s Greenberg, carpentry won’t do. He’s too much of an artist-searcher complainer, and it’s not enough to anesthetize the demons. The film reminds that when you have a hungry visionary Bengal tiger inside you, you’d best express it or the tiger will eat you up from within. That or you’ll start collapsing bit by bit.

I know that tune myself. My main job in my early to mid 20s was trimming trees, which didn’t work for me either. At all. I was fucking around on the margins as a party-hound and a rock-band drummer and a chaser of skirt. And the Bengal tiger began to growl more and more loudly — let me out! — and I began to see myself as a failure because I wasn’t trying hard enough to make that happen.

I’d told Stiller earlier that I was impressed with how deeply Greenberg just settles in with the manner and psychology of Stiller’s character without feeling the need to go all “story” on the audience. A genuinely ballsy move on Noah’s part. The humor is so subdued and embedded within situation and milieu that it’s not humor — it’s John Cassevetes-like introspection. I’m obviously saying that with respect.

Stiller’s performance, in any event, seems to me like a landmark-type thing — a seriously ego-free inhabiting of antsy-quirk neuroticism. Being, not acting, and certainly with any audience comfort-winks. A breakthrough of some kind.

If there’s a rowdy commercial horse laugh in Greenberg, I missed it — and bravo to that. I didn’t “laugh” when I saw it, but I was constantly LQTM-ing by way of surprisingly intimate recognition. I felt that I was communing in part with my late brother, Tony. Greenberg is nothing if not relentlessly itself, and never seems to go for schtick of any kind. Personal recognition laughter, as most of us know, is never “hah-hah-hah.” As Michael O’Donoghue once said, making people laugh is the lowest form of humor.

“I think you connected in the same way with the movie that we all did while making it,” Stiller replied in an e-mail — eloquently, I thought. “I too recognize Greenberg, and I have to say I’ve never had an experience like this, where a character was so specifically written, and I ended up feeling a connection with that aspect of myself. I actually feel protective of him — or maybe that aspect of people I love who have not had the good fortune to have outward success or acknowledgement in this world. It can be very painful, just to get through the days. To get past your own self imposed barriers, that are all very real.

“I feel very fortunate to have had this experience, and I love Noah for it. He is a truly good person, who as you said did something brave in movies now — allowing the character’s real, incremental growth, to be the story. I learned a lot from him.”

During last Saturday’s panel discussion of the withered state of film criticism following a screening of Gerald Peary‘s For The Love of Movies, notoriously snarly critic Richard Schickel (formerly of Time) was asked if he ever reads criticism online. “Why would you do that?,” he replied. “I don’t actually read many reviews. I never did. But I’m not going to go around looking for Harry Knowles. I mean, look at that person! Why would anybody…pay the slightest attention to anything he said? He’s a gross human being.”

Critic/documentarian Richard Schickel; AICN’s Harry Knowles

Besides Schickel the panel included Vogue‘s John Powers, former L.A. Weekly and current NPR critic Ella Taylor, former Christian Science Monitor critic David Sterritt and Christian Science Monitor critic Peter Rainer. The talk was moderated by Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson. It happened at the Billy Wilder theatre inside Westwood’s Armand Hammer Museum.

“Watching all these kind of earnest people discussing the art or whatever the hell it is of criticism, all that, it just made me so sad,” Schickel remarked. “You mean they have nothing else to do? I don’t know honestly the function of reviewing anything.

“I remember talking to Paul Schrader once about how when he came into movies, he thought he entered what was the natural state of movies, which is you got to make Taxi Driver,” he recalled. “You got to make all these weird, interesting movies and Hollywood wanted you to do it and it was only when it began to stop he realized he was living in the historical aberration.

“And for a lot of film critics, we are living in the historical aberration probably in the history of the arts where you got to make a lot of money, write about an art form at its peak and actually not only have it at its peak, but the public in general was going to that art form for ways of understanding the world. It’s not that way now.”

I’d love to attend Friday night’s Spirit Awards presentation at L.A. Live in Los Angeles, but, as I noted on 2.17, it seems excessive to throw down $600 or $700 bills (plane fare, car rental, incidentals) to that end. Plus I never get invited to any of those pre-Oscar agent parties in the hills. Plus I just watch the show on Sundays and live-blog, which I could do from Prague or Santiago if I had to.

So I’m thinking instead about attending Movieline‘s Oscar-viewing soiree at 92YTribeca. Maybe. If I can be assured there won’t be too much yappity-yap from the hosts (Michelle Collins, Sarah Benincase, Sara Schaefer), and if there’s a good spot to live-blog from (table, semi-comfortable stool or chair, nearby wall outlet). Otherwise screw it — I’ll just watch it from home with the cats.

Two or three recent articles in which military vets have challenged The Hurt Locker‘s accuracy have been counter-balanced to some extent by a 2.28 ABC News article — co-authored by Martha Raddatz, Richard Coolidge and Joel Siegel — that quotes two former bomb-deactivation specialists. Their view is that certain events depicted in the film are actually fairly dead-on.

Marine Tim Colomer, who de-activated “more than 150 bombs in Iraq” as a Marine explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) technician in 2006 and ’07, says that The Hurt Locker “took me back to Iraq almost immediately…it was tantamount to being there.” And Marine Staff Sgt. Gabriel Burkman, wounded twice during his tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, says that a scene criticized by some vets — i.e., Jeremy Renner‘s Sgt. James removing his bomb suit before a defusing — is grounded in reality. “Sometimes the bomb suit is not applicable,” he says, “and some team leaders won’t use it.”

Colomer “says the movie takes some ‘artistic license,’ but he calls the bomb scenes realistic — and acknowledges that he took off his bomb suit once in a while, just like Renner’s character. ‘You are so slowed down in that bomb suit, especially if you’re getting shot at or there’s indirect fire — you can’t afford to be that slow,’ he says.”

Earlier Hurt Locker military-critique articles have struck some observers as curiously timed and most likely indicative of a take-down strategy on someone’s part.

And The Winner Is columnist Scott Feinberg reported yesterday that “over the past few days, several L.A.-based rabbis — either on their own initiative or at someone else’s urging — have written articles in which they describe Inglourious Basterds as a modern-day retelling of the story of Purim, the Jewish holiday which began Sunday and continues through today, and urging people to vote for it on their Oscar ballots (which are due on Tuesday — i.e., tomorrow).

Remember the excitement that accompanied Robert Harris and James Katz‘s 1991 restoration of Kirk Douglas and Stanley Kubrick‘s Spartacus? Called the “most extensive film restoration in history, painstakingly reconstructed from decades-old negative and color separation prints, at a cost of nearly $1 million,” etc.? The sumptuous detail of a large costume epic (set in Biblical times but not the least bit Biblical in story or theme) shot in Super Technirama 70 and all that?

It’s now nearly 20 years later and guess what? The 2001 Criterion DVD version of this restored epic, which I happened to buy at Barnes and Noble yesterday, doesn’t look very good when you play it on a Bluray player and watch it on a 42″ HDTV plasma (i.e., my own). It looks okay at times, and at other times vaguely shitty — weak, not sharp enough, second-tierish.

And yet the same disc looked fine when I played it on my old 36″ Sony flatscreen. The problem, I’m told, is the Bluray player, which tends to bring out weaknesses on standard DVDs that don’t show up when you play them on a regular DVD player. So basically I’ve pissed away the dough that I bought the Criterion DVD with, and I’m not happy.

And I’m not sure I’ll be all that happy either when the Spartacus Bluray from Universal Home Video comes out on 5.25. If it’s anything like their 1998 DVD, which looks pathetic — i.e., washed-out color and a 2.35 to 1 aspect ratio framing for a film intended to be shown at a 2.2 to 1 — it’ll obviously be a problem.

What needs to happen, of course, is for Criterion to produce its own Spartacus Bluray. But this can’t occur because Criterion doesn’t have the Spartacus home-video rights any more. Universal owns them, and they’re not about to let Criterion show them how the film should really look (corporate egos and all that) so forget it. Which means that all that incredibly difficult and super-costly work on the ’91 Spartacus restoration is basically a thing of memory. It would be nice if the full lustre of that restoration is revealed by the Universal Bluray, but it’s not very likely.

Who doesn’t despise President Obama‘s stated dreamscape belief in the notion of bipartisan support for health care reform, or more particularly the fantasy of Republicans having the slightest interest in allowing the less-well-offs to receive comprehensive health care at more affordable rates?

Apart from the general venality of Republican positions on this matter, there’s nothing quite as contemptible as the inability of Democrats to achieve what they claim they want to achieve by whatever means necessary. Everyone loathes ineffectualness and flaccidity.

A portion of last Wednesday’s chat with Girl With The Dragon Tattoo director Niels Arden Oplev covered his not having directed the two sequels — The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest. Both were directed by Daniel Alfredson.

As I mentioned during our chat, Oplev’s reason for declining to helm these films (or at least the one he shared) sounds similar to Catherine Hardwicke‘s reason for not wanting to direct New Moon. He basically felt that the second two books (or did he mean the second two scripts) had a rushed, slapdash quality — less emotionally grounded, more plotty-for-plot’s-sake, etc.

This is almost a Shutter Island-type shot — gothic vibe, moonlight, ominous clouds — and I took it without thinking the other night. I love this kind of accident.

The day I took this my little 12 megapixel Canon Digital Elph cracked open, leaving me no option but to return to Best Buy for a replacement. To my surprise they’d just gotten in a brand-new 14 megapixel model called the SD1400 IS. It takes noticably cleaner video than the other one, or so it seems. It’s still only 720p, of course. Two or three years hence these little guys will have 1080p, and then we’ll be cooking.

Martin Scorsese‘s Shutter Island was the top ticket seller yesterday ($6.7 million) for a second weekend in a row. I have one question — why? It’s laboriously over-shot and over-saturated. Why would anyone recommend it to a friend with any enthusiasm? Is it the word “island” that’s attracting people? Cop Out (Warner Bros.) is second with $5.9 million, and The Crazies (Overture) is third with $5.9 million.

Greenberg costar/mumblecore legend Greta Gerwig during a roundtable session at the Waldorf Astoria — Friday, 2.26, 11:05 am.

To hear it from a trusted research-screening informant, Anne Hathaway‘s performance as Jake Gyllenhaal‘s Parkinson’s-afflicted love interest in Ed Zwick‘s Love and Other Drugs is “wonderful, really wonderful…she knocks it out of the park.” Plus their love affair, he says, is portrayed in strongly compelling terms. Resulting, he reports, in significant deep-down feeling plus some heavy love scenes with ample nudity.

Love and Other Drugs costars Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway.

My concern here is with Zwick, a problem director who’s always emotionally overplayed this or that aspect of his films. But my informant, who saw the film last week at Pasadena’s Pacific Paseo, is, in my judgment, a sharp and reliable observer with taste. And — hello? — everyone knows the meaning of a recently Oscar-nominated actress (as Hathaway is/was for Rachel Getting Married) returning with another powerhouse performance that involves coping with a delibilitating disease.

Hathaway’s Love and Other Drugs performance, in short, sounds like the first strong contender for a 2010 Best Actress Oscar.

I don’t know when 20th Century Fox is releasing Love and Other Drugs, but I know it was shooting as recently as last November in the Pittsburgh area. The fact that it’s already being research-screened seems to indicate some kind of fast-track thinking. I would guess a fall release, perhaps beginning with Toronto/Telluride, but who knows? I wrote a couple of Fox guys about this but I guess they don’t work on weekends.

Set in the mid ’90s, the drama-with-comic-flavorings (as opposed to a full-out dramedy) is partly based on James Reidy‘s “Hard Sell: Evolution of a Viagra Salesman.” The IMDB says the script was co-written by Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz and Charles Randolph.

Gyllenhaal plays Jamie, a Jerry Maguire-ish pharmaceutical salesman on the make. Hathaway’s character, Maggie Murdock, is coping with first-stage Parkinson’s disease, and…why am I trying to be the authority here when I haven’t seen it? Here’s how my source put it — his descriptions are ragged and unfocused at times but I don’t have the knowledge to sharpen or hone.

“It’s pretty ambitious story about the mid ’90s Viagra boom and selling pharmaceuticals for Phizer. Hathaway, Hank Azaria. Oliver Platt plays Gyllenhaal’s mentor, and it’s probably the best role he’s ever had, and perhaps his best performance. He teaches Gyllenhaal the ropes, and he has a really great speech toward the end. The story line, which is basically about Gyllenhaal becoming a pharma salesman, is fairly complex. George Segal and Jill Clayburgh play his parents. Josh Gad is the fat younger brother — the Jonah Hill character.

“Gyllenhaal and Hathaway’s love affair is the main thing. Hathaway’s Maggie is coping with stage one of Parkinson’s — a very intense and interesting charatcer, well versed in her sickness. And Jake is trying to sell Viagra, and they meet and are attracted and end up having an affair.

“The script take pains to paint the Gyllenhaal character as a rake, a ladies’ man. Zwick doesn’t do that good a job in some respects. There’s a lot of bullshit Eloi humor and basically shitty schtick. Mostly about the younger brother being a fat-ass. There’s some lame orgy in the middle of it with Jake accidentally overdosing on Viagra…girls at a party cause him to swallow too much of it, and he won’t go down, resulting in priapism.

“The most exciting part of the film is their relationship. A lot of nudity, a lot of really well done lovemaking stuff, and some of it that isn’t so good. It’s hard to explain. But Hathaway really knocks it out of the park…she’s amazing, wonderful. Gyllenhaal is not as impressive, in my view. He’s good in this but he can be a cypher. He’s got a pretty narrow range. His character is a really smart guy with no drive…he could have been a doctor but he didn’t do it. He’s a good salesman but also a ladies’ man. But Hathaway dominates.

“So the relationship part is good, the pharmaceutical stuff is good. And like I said, Platt has a great speech at the end.

“Hathaway is so great she’s almost in a different movie. They movie spends some time on the Parkinson’s effects. She and Jake go to a big drug fair, and there’s an alternative convention across the street focusing on organic Parkinson’s remedies, and she goes over to this event. We see some real Parkinson’s people talking up their personal stuff the way the unemployed talked for Up In The Air. At one point she’s shown taking senior citizens across the border to get cheaper drugs in Canada.

“Hathaway is a hard case, in a sense. She doesn’t want a real love affair with anyone because she knows it’s not going to last because she’s fucked. The symptoms of stage one Parkinson’s are intermittent jitters and losing physical ability, hands shaking…she’s in that stage, and taking drugs to control that. But you’re feeling all through it that this is a must-happen relationship.

“The core of the romance is Jake’s overcoming his shallow relationship history, and Anne overcoming her emotionally aloof thing. And she’s really wonderful, absolutely wonderful.”

There’s also an IMDB guy who claimed on 2.18 that he attended the same Pacific Paseo screening. The location and date seem to align so here’s what he said:

“I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe just another idiotic rom-com, but this movie is original, funny, unbelievably sexy, and really moving. And it’s about something.

“I have to admit I’ve never been much of a Jake Gyllenhaal fan, but as a slick Viagra salesman he’s not only charming and witty, he’s also got this new warm, strong and quiet leading-man thing going.

“Anne Hathaway burns up the screen, and not just because she’s naked half the time. Even when she’s dressed you simply can’t take your eyes off her. I thought she was good in Rachel Getting Married, but in this one — as a free-spirit arty girl with early-onset Parkinson’s — she’s very funny and really hard-core. My guess is another nomination will be coming her way.

“What else…? Josh Gad, who I recognized as one of the correspondents on The Daily Show, is the potty-mouthed younger brother. Sometimes it feels like he’s a refugee from a Judd Apatow movie, but he’s also sweet and innocent. Oliver Platt, who’s always good, is in it, too. And Judy Greer has got some funny stuff but she seems underused (like maybe they cut part of her story?)

“I’m the big know-it-all who always predicts what’s going to happen next in a movie, but this time I was always surprised. One minute I was laughing hysterically and the next I found myself wiping tears away. Some people will compare it to Jerry Ma-fucking-guire, which I think is a truly great movie. But this one has real depth to it. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a comedy show a relationship with this kind of intimacy and authenticity. I don’t know how else to say it — I really believed these two people were in love.”