“Trailblazers,” a booklet essay by Todd McCarthy inside the forthcoming Downhill Racer DVD, explains the curious mystique of Robert Redford‘s David Chappellet, “a determined loner from Colorado who…singlemindedly pursues the goal of winning with a total disregard for protocols and personal niceties. He’s a heel, a good-looking backwoods hick who hides his ignorance and social unease with a defiant impenetrability.

Opening page of Todd McCarthy’s essay about lingering impact and making of Michael Ritchie and Robert Redford’s Downhill Racer, contained in a booklet inside the just-arrived Criterion DVD.

“In real life, Chappellet would just be a prick; he joins the plentiful ranks of antiheroes who helped define American movies from roughly 1967 to 1975. Even forty years ago, Chappellet seemed like an icy, recalcitrant character, and his clamped down, emotionally inacessible nature no doubt played a part in the film’s commercial failure.

“But his stubborn anti-authoritarianism was standard-issue equipment at the time — think Warren Beatty in Arthur Penn‘s Bonnie and Clyde, Dustin Hoffman in Mike Nichols‘ The Graduate, Jack Nicholson in Bob Rafelson‘s Five Easy Pieces, Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland in Robert Altman‘s MASH — so while his attitudes were purely selfish rather than intellectually worked out, his instinct to buck the system andf go his own way did not seem as extreme as it does today.”

These last two graphs pretty much, sum up what I love about Downhill Racer. which is to say that I’ve always felt a kind of intuitive affinity for Chappellet. It’s clear who and what he is (i.e., a guy who could stand a lot less narcissim in his personality, a lot more in the way of manners and a liberal-arts education) but I’ve always gotten the guy. I understand how he got there, and why he’s not inclined to open up or reconsider his attitude or game plan. I get him all the way down to the marrow.

This prompted me to consider a list of the cinema’s Great Solitary Men. Not lonely guys (which automatically implies a distant angsty condition that a character probably wants to heal with a hug or a girlfriend of a mom or best friend) as much as guys who are more or less content with their aloneness. Guys who seemingly are ready to be and stay that way — unpartnered, uncomforted, self-sufficient, untethered — for the rest of their lives if need be. Not a state of happiness by any stretch of the concept, but at the very least a state of cool comfort that says, “Whatever happens and whatever comes, I’m sticking to me and I’ll be just fine that way because I know and trust myself like no other person on the planet.”

Lee Marvin‘s Walker in Point Blank is one of these guys. Clint Eastwood‘s tough-guy persona of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s is pretty much built upon the solitary man mystique. Marlon Brando‘s “Johnny” character in The Wild One, I suppose. Montgomery Clift‘s Robert E. Lee Prewitt almost measures up except he’s looking for love from whore-girl Donna Reed so I guess not. Several Steve McQueen characters (i.e., in Hell Is For Heroes, Bullitt, The Sand Pebbles) fit the mold. We’re talking about an awfully long list here.

It’s not that I’ve chilled on Avatar anticipation. I was rocked by the special 3D ComicCon presentation, but the Avatar Day reel, as I wrote on 8,.22, left me “feeling a little Avatar-ed out…no bump-up…like before only less so…doesn’t play as well the second time.” I only know that every time I run Avatar in my head, I still see a flash of Bruno Ganz’s Hitler. Intriguing as the latest trailer is, I can’t expunge what’s been, for me, the funniest fan-rant of the year. Sorry…it’ll pass.

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“When you first start out you’re always striving for greatness and perfection and then after some years reality sets in and you realize that you’re not going to get it.” — Woody Allen between shots of his latest London-based film (allegedly titled You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger), talking to the Telegraph‘s John Hiscock in a piece than ran ages ago (i.e., 9.29).

Maybe you’re “not going to get it” just so, but urgent creative strivings of talented young (or younger) directors looking to mark their mark tend to produce their best films. Allen seems to be saying he’ll never make a film like Manhattan or Annie Hall or even Stardust Memories ever again, and that he’s more or less content with that. That’s a rather grim attitude. I’ll take the young Scorsese (Mean Streets to Raging Bull) over the latter-day version any day of the week. Ditto young Coppola vs. old Coppola. Or young Bertolucci (Before The Revolution, The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris). Or young DePalma (The Phantom of the Paradise, Sisters, Greetings). Or young Jim Cameron (Piranha, Terminator, T2, Aliens) over the silver-haired Avatar techno-maestro he’s since become.

The Guardian‘s Daniel Nasaw reported today that Los Angeles authorities seeking to imprison fugitive film director Roman Polanski may face a new obstacle in the 32-year-old case — the victim wants no part in it.

“Samantha Geimer, who was 13 years old when Polanski gave her drugs and had sex with her, today asked a Los Angeles court to drop the charges against the Chinatown director. Polanski fled the US in 1978 after pleading guilty to illegal sex. He was arrested in Zurich last month and is fighting extradition to the US.

“In a court filing today, Geimer said she has been besieged by nearly 500 calls from news media since Polanski’s arrest. She lives in Hawaii and long ago publicly identified herself as the victim and forgave Polanski, but said she and her family have to contend with pressure when he is in the news. She said she is being stalked by journalists from international news organizations and has received interview requests from Oprah Winfrey and CNN’s Larry King.

“The pursuit has caused her to have health-related issues,” the filing states. “The pursuit has caused her performance at her job to be interfered with and has caused the understandable displeasure of her employer and the real possibility that Samantha could lose her job.” I presume that “health-related issues” is a reference to anxiety and other nervous afflictions.

I’m tapping the iPhone while waiting for my number to appear at the Cole Avenue DMV, but the key casting decision for the Coen Bros.‘s True Grit is the young-girl narrator (i.e., the Kim Darby role in the Henry Hathaway/John Wayne version). Not that the hiring of Matt Damon for the Glenn Campbell role and Josh Brolin as the baddy is inconsequential news.

I’ve reviewed Michael Moran‘s 50 Biggest Movies of 2010 piece in the London Times. The biggest money-makers, he means, which in itself implies a kind of synthetic Eloi quality. Because if these 50 were 2010’s absolute best there would be cause to seriously think about calling off the 2011 Oscars.

But forget awards. All I want to see just to see ’em are (1) Tim Burton‘s Alice in Wonderland, (2) Hot Tub Time Machine, (3) Paul Greengrass‘s The Green Zone, (4) Phillip Noyce‘s Salt, (5) The Rum Diary, (6) Ridley Scott‘s Robin Hood (but only somewhat), (7) Eat Pray Love, (8) Oliver Stone‘s Wall Street 2, (9) Unstoppable and (10) London Boulevard.

It certainly is wonderful news about Ricky Gervais having signed to host next year’s Golden Globe Award telecast. Okay, I was being facetious. It may be a good thing now that I’m actually thinking about it. Gervais can be agreeably blunt and cutting, and if he’s really and truly been given free reign, this could be good. Golden Globe nommies will be announced on 12.15. The show will air live on 1.17.10 from 5 to 8 pm Pacific, 8 to 11 p.m. Eastern.

In Contention‘s Kris Tapley said this morning that Lee Daniels‘ Precious is “the frontrunner of this year’s Oscar race.” Reading this prompted an involuntary leg-muscle spasm so sudden and fierce that it tipped over my black office chair and sent me crashing to the floor.

Precious is a film to sincerely admire and respect as far as it goes. It moved me more than I suspected it would (based on the first half hour, I mean), but Mo’Nique‘s mom-from-hell performance almost makes it into a kind of grotesque horror film. What she does is a bit like Mary Tyler Moore‘s emotionally frigid mom in Ordinary People not just withholding affection from her sad-sack son (i.e., Timothy Hutton) but talking like Lawrence Tierney and spewing pea soup out of her mouth.

Precious touches bottom and exudes compassion, but it’s nothing close to a masterwork…please. It’s a very good film fortified by strong discussable performances. It’s a contender, sure, but no way in hell is it any kind of front-runner. Not now, not next month or next year…forget it.

“Oscar pundits are going 10-slot crazy this year, wondering whether the additional spots will go to the multiplex or to the art house,” writes the Hollywood Reporter‘s Stephen Zeitchik.

“Whatever answers emerge, it’s clear that with an expanded field, voters will have to make tougher choices than usual — if not when mentally filling out their list of 10, then when they start anointing movies from among that list. With the widened field, there’s a wider split between the feel-good contenders and the downbeat ones, between movies that depict the world as it is and those that show the world as we wish it to be.”

Zeitchik then startled me cold by suggesting that The Hangover might be one of the ten Best Picture contenders.

Voters, he says, “will have to choose between the story of an inner-city girl whose stepfather has repeatedly raped her and an old man who takes a magical, life-affirming balloon ride. They’ll have to decide between a group of male bomb-defusers drawn to the nightmare of the battlefield and a group of male friends drawn hilariously to the escapism of Vegas.”

Just a minute, hold on….Zeitchik has mentioned The Hurt Locker and The Hangover in the same Oscar-prognosticating sentence? Is the world coming to an end? Is it 2012 out there, causing Zeitchik to freak out and lose touch with his usually reliable perceptions?

“This choice won’t simply be a cultural statement,” he adds. “It’s no accident that, as the studio specialty business withers away, nearly all the downbeat contenders (Precious, Bright Star, The Hurt Locker) were made outside the studio system, while almost all those celebrating life’s aspirational side (Up, Star Trek, The Hangover, Invictus) were made within it.”

Star Trek? A nifty, neato zing-ding summer flick but a Best Picture contender? In what planetary system?

There’s something dark and malignant about a world in which reasonable professionals suggest that The Hangover and Star Trek might really and truly be serious Best Picture contenders while at the same time barely acknowledging the pristine perfection and world-class comedic gloom that A Serious Man divvies out in spades. There must be something in the air or the water. Some kind of mad swine flu of the mind.

There’s no ducking out of watching This Is It!, the Michael Jackson doc coming out Wednesday. Every instinct and intuition tells me it’s going to be a huge downer and a pageant of resounding phoniness, but it has to be seen and endured and commented upon regardless. I know I don’t believe a single word that director Kenny Ortega says to Ben Sisario in this N.Y. Times story about the film.