What would the last couple of weeks before a new super-costly James Cameron movie be without a Kim Masters article saying “uh-oh…big financial risk…look out!” But her 11.29 Daily Beast piece, titled “James Cameron’s Titanic Gamble,” does introduce an Avatar impression that I’ve never heard before. The Na’vi don’t look like cats but goats, in the view of “a veteran producer of A-list films.”

My initital Na’vi impression, which I posted on 8.14, was that they reminded me of the old Pinocchio donkeys in the 1940 Walt Disney film. Then I switched over to Captain Planet With Cats and then the wide Na’vi cougar noses. But after reading Masters’ piece I can’t get the goat thing out of my head, despite the above photo comparison not lending much support.

The other Masters quote that leaps out is one from a studio chief, who says, “I’m curious to see [Avatar] — I’m not anxious to see it.”

There’s a kind of a spillover effect between comments about the “dead eyes” in the characters populating Robert Zemeckis‘ A Christmas Carol, which under-performed, and the wary expectation comments about Avatar. (I had to read the piece a second time to realize the guy complaining about “dead eyes” was referring to the Zemeckis film and not Cameron’s.) But Masters makes it clear a paragraph or two later that Avatar isn’t expected to look the same or suffer a Christmas Carol fate.

Avatar producer Jon Landau and Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman have both said that the film has the ‘emotionality‘ that previous motion-capture films have lacked,” she writes, adding that Cameron “used tiny cameras mounted on his performers’ faces to avoid the dead-eye look.

“No one has seen a full version of Avatar yet but those who have seen pieces of it say the technique is more immersive than flashy.” But when I visualize goats I don’t think of emotionally expressive eyes — who does?

“If one is talking Oscars with a film like Invictus then it’s worth considering that even fans of the piece couldn’t possibly, credibly consider it one of Eastwood’s top tier works,” writes In Contention‘s Kris Tapley. “An expanded Best Picture category and enough traditionalist voting methods will likely secure it a spot in the field, and Morgan Freeman has enough gravitas to coast to a most undeserved nomination, but beyond that, nothing rings true.

“Best Director? It would be surprising. Best Supporting Actor? The acting branch would be voting on autopilot. Below the line? Not enough frills.

“But away from the black hole of awards considerations, it’s difficult not to see Invictus as a warning that Eastwood could be on the precipice of a Woody Allen-like plunge following a very commendable late-career burst. Every one of Allen’s films as of late, throughout his career, have been about something. But the craft has worn thin (save for last year’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona). That’s where I’d say Eastwood finds himself, despite what critical apologists might say. A few moments away from the fray might do him good.”

Alllen’s Match Point was thin? Not according to my yardstick.

Eastwood can’t take a few moments away from the fray because if he did he’d lost his momentum. He’s following a plan — keep moving, stay limbre, keep ’em coming at a price — and he’s on a clock. As Christopher Plummer‘s Mike Wallace says in the third act of The Insider, “What do I say at this point? That in the future I’d like to do this or that? Future…what future?”:

I love the podcast moment when In Contention‘s Kris Tapley and Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson are discussing Invictus and Tapley presses her to say if she thought it was “flat” or not and she says yeah, she sorta did find it flat, and yet she found it moving all the same.

If there’s one description that applies to Thompson as a film critic or commentator it’s “diplomatic.” She knows the film world over under sideways down, but butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. And yet I felt for her this time because I expressed a somewhat similar view in my own review, which went up on 11.27. I didn’t call Invictus moving, although I did equate it to good pasta.

“I almost admire [director Clint] Eastwood for keeping it as simple and straightforward as it is,” I wrote. “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 Morgan Freeman.”

Oh, and Eastwood really did arrive in South Africa only a couple of days before shooting started on Invictus. And he finished eight days ahead of schedule.

So now it’s even more certain that Inglourious Basterds will wedge its way onto the list of ten Best Picture nominees because all the December releases are falling short…is that it? That’s more or less how In Contention‘s Kris Tapley expressed it over the Thanksgiving holiday in his podcast chat with Anne Thompson.

I’m sensing that Quentin Tarantino may have called his agent, Mike Simpson at William Morris, sometime last week to kibbutz.

Tarantino: “You’re hearing what I’m hearing, right? Nobody’s seen Avatar but all the other December releases are, like, good or pretty good or whatever but nothing’s really going through the roof so they’re…they’re, whatever, likely Best Picture contenders but at the same time they’re soft so…like, we’re in! ”

Simpson: “I’ve never had a moment’s doubt but now I know we’re good. Cat’s in the bag…”

Tarantino: “Done deal!”

Simpson: “Congrats, Quentin. Really, man.”

Tarantino: “We’ve been strong all along because…you know, Basterds fans are adamant or enthused whereas Nine or Invictus seem to be….well, you know, people like them…I mean, I loved Nine and Harvey knows this, but we’ve got the truly passionate following. And now that Brothers has been seen and Lovely Bones is…well, I guess it’s pretty much dead.”

Simpson: “You saw it?

Tarantino: “No, but the word hasn’t been…you know…”

Simpson: “Yeah, I know.”

Tarantino: “Except for one guy, Kris Tapley…he called it ‘dangerously close to a masterpiece‘ or some shit. He’s probably alone given what I’m hearing but even if Bones experiences a turnaround, we’re still good. The people that like us really like us, so we’re good no matter what. What I really want, as you know, is Best Original Screenplay…wait, are we Adapted or Original? I’ve forgotten. But that’s what matters along with Best Picture. Anyway…”

Simpson: “We’re good so we’re good.”

Tarantino: “Woo-hooo!!!”

An industry friend who also attended yesterday afternoon’s A Streetcar Named Desire performance at BAM wrote and asked what I thought. “A pretty good first act but a great second act,” I replied. “Cate Blanchett is devastating, brilliant, heartbreaking.”

“I was very closely attuned to the line readings in the first act. I know Elia Kazan‘s 1951 film extremely well, and I noticed how each and every line was delivered differently in this production. As if the actors had studied it also and resolved, ‘I will say each and every line differently…no exceptions!’

“I didn’t care at all for the set, which felt needlessly cramped, claustrophobic. I guess I’m used to the French Quarter flavor of the set in the film. All that stage height and director Liv Ullman decided to keep the atmosphere as small and glum as possible. Joel Edgerton, the muscular Sydney actor who plays Stanley Kowalski, was okay but his voice seemed a little too reedy and downmarket in a rehearsed voice-coach sort of way. (Nobody can top Marlon Brando.) Robin McLeavy‘s Stella was fine; ditto the Mitch guy.”

This 11.30 Claudia Eller/L.A. Times piece about the marketing of Up In The Air reminds us that selling motion pictures to the American public today is about the fine art of communicating with the dumbest, most under-educated and most culturally insulated people in the history of western civilization. Not to mention the most heavily narcotized (i.e., via food, alcohol, prescription drugs, constant TV watching, frequent visits to malls).

Listen to the marketing guys Eller runs quotes from. The way they talk about how audiences have to be approached just so, using just the right attitude and carefully chosen words. The marketers could be orderlies in an Oregon mental hospital in the early ’60s talking about how to deal with Billy Bibbit, the Chief, Dale Harding, George Sorensen, Martini and Charles Cheswick.

So Josh Leonard‘s The Lie, which would be called a mumblecore marital drama if the word “mumblecore” hadn’t been expunged from the indie-realm vocabulary, won’t be ready for Sundance ’10. L.A. Times reporter Mark Olsen suggests South by Southwest or Cannes as possibilities. Mark Webber and Jess Weixler costar.

The Lie director Josh Leonard (the bearded goofball smoothie in Humpday) directing Mark Webber.

Here’s the T. Coraghessan Boyle short story the film is based upon.

Saturday, 11.29, 7:48 pm.

If I hadn’t wandered into an upscale framed-poster store in Chelsea, I probably never would have visited the IMDB page of this 1969 Vittorio Gassman-Sharon Tate film, which has an English-language title of 12 + 1. It was Tate’s last film. She was three months pregnant and starting to show very slightly when production began in March 1969. Movies have been my faith and religion all my life and I’ve never heard of this thing. It’ll almost certainly never see a DVD release.

I realize I’m pretty much alone in believing that Oscar pundits should try and lead a little bit — maybe even inspire on some level — in their award-season scribblings. They could and should do this, I feel, by subtly or superstitiously or irrationally stepping outside the box and doing more than just predicting which films and performances the Hollywood voting community is going to favor. Now and then, at least.

Like me and Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil and one or two others, they should mysteriously and inconsistently blend their predictions with some personal conviction of their own — a little feeling, a little seat-of-the-pants instinct or passion or spittoon-spitting. I realize that some sorta kinda do this but others seem averse. With a soapbox comes responsibility, and I think they should try to stir the pot and rouse the choir a little. From November to mid December, at least. Or until early January…whatever.

I only know there can’t be anything more tedious than to just sit in the bleachers and say, “I think the Academy’s going to vote for this” or “No, no, I think you’re wrong…the Academy is going to vote for that!” What could be worse than to be lying on your deathbed and saying to yourself, “Well, I sure knew how to quack like a duck when it came to Oscar predictions!”

Some pundits and columnists make a practice, I realize, of posting their personal year-end favorites with no attention paid to politics or award predictions or anything. I just did this earlier today, and I realize that posting such a list is an acknowledgement that politics and box-office and predictions are mostly what columnists pay attention to. We all know what the game is. I obviously play it and pay my bills with the ad revenue. But every so often you have to stand up and be yourself and…you know, expand the repertoire.

I’m respectfully requesting here and now that those who haven’t yet posted a personal preferences list to do so. Clean out your head and throw caution to the winds and just say what you really feel about the films you’ve seen this year. Your readers would like to know, and so would I.

Sincere thanks to Ben Stiller for mentioning my involvement in the Tokyo Film Festival screening of The Cove on last Thursday’s Larry King Show. Stiller and Cove hero Ric O’Barry discussed The Cove and how, as the Huffington Post summarizes, “with Stiller’s help [the film] was shown at the Tokyo Film Festival.” Close enough.

I started to do a riff on The Hurt Locker as in order to explain why it’s sitting at the top of the 2009 Pure Pleasure list, but it went off in another tangent after I began talking about having recently met a couple of women who hadn’t heard of Kathryn Bigelow‘s film. Not 20-something waitresses this time but two well-to-do women in their 50s who’ve obviously been around and gotten a good grasp of things. Here’s how I put it:

Bigelow’s Iraq War thriller took me into a world of zero safety and security — the anxiety-plagued, dry-sweat realm of a military bomb-defusal squad in 2004 Baghdad. Except Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal do give us security — the kind that a person who’s “good” (in the Howard Hawks sense of that term) brings to this daily threat. A guy, in short, like Jeremy Renner‘s Sgt. James — smart, highly skilled, improvisational and focused like a madman.

And there’s the rub. James is an adrenaline junkie who simultaneously protects and endangers his team (Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty). The movie, likewise, also enthralls and unnerves audiences, and leaves them with an experience they’ll never forget.

The irony is that all those Hurt Locker raves that have been pouring in all year seem to have persuaded potential audiences that it’s an experience they’d rather not have in the first place.

If you’re averse to edge-junkie anxiety then Bigelow’s film is probably going to put you off on some level. The odd thing is that so many critics and filmmakers and cinema buffs have been turned on by this film, which is a guaranteed lock for a Best Picture nomination, and yet it’s only made $12 million. What’s this about apart from Summit Entertainment not knowing how to sell it, or lacking the will to keep plugging away?

I’ll tell you what the problem is. One, eight out of ten action-and-excitement fans (i.e., under-40 males) seem to prefer Michael Bay/Roland Emmerich CG crap to real-deal tension machines like The Hurt Locker. And two, women won’t deal with it. The buzz has convinced them that it’s too threatening, too invested in a situation that’s almost totally about non-assurance, and isn’t in the least bit concerned with fortifying the nest. (Which it isn’t, to judge by what Sgt. James does at the end.)

These are the same women, by the way, who won’t go to see The Cove because they don’t want to see Flipper get stabbed. And the same women who are going this weekend to The Blind Side and can’t wait to pay to see It’s Complicated.

Mainstream women have actually gone farther, I believe, than simply not buying tickets to The Hurt Locker. As with most war films I think many if not most women have instinctually decided to ignore it — to emotionally and psychologically wrap it up in newspaper and drop it in a garbage can.

The other night inside the Hotel Regency bar I spoke to two bright and attractive women in their 50s who hadn’t even heard of The Hurt Locker, and one of them used to work as a talent manager and knew the movie world that I live in (or lived in during the ’90s) pretty well. It’s one thing for sophisticated ladies to say “no thanks” or that they’d rather wait for the DVD, and another to say (and during Oscar season yet!), “What’s the title again?”

I suspect that these women (and millions like them) did hear of The Hurt Locker around the time it opened last summer, but they erased it off their hard drives so quickly and instinctually that it’s like it never existed. Physiologically the title was heard by their ears — the sound waves got through — but psychologically it was brushed off like cows in the pasture flicking at flies with their tails.