I can’t get enough of Ruben Fleischer‘s Zombieland (Sony, 10.2). The various trailers I’ve seen keep getting more and more kickass. I know exactly what it’ll be (I think) and I’m 90% convinced I’m going to love it unless, you know, it shows a lack of discipline and good story structure and all the other basics. I’m expecting something on the level of Dawn of the Dead mixed with….uhm, Adventureland?

Too bad it’s not being shown at Toronto since every serious-minded film festival needs at least one stupidly enjoyable goof-off flick. And it won’t be that stupid because Jesse Eisenberg is costarring. Eisebnberg’s presence is almost an assurance of quality in that he seems to ask for an Owen Wilson clause in his contracts — he can’t and won’t do full-on stupid, and his lines have to have an element of conversational realism. If it was just Woody Harrelson doing his struttin’ around good-ole-boy thing I might have qualms, but it’s clearly more than that.

Just offering my appreciation to the New York Weinstein Co. publicists for having a screening yesterday of John Hillcoat‘s The Road (opening 10.16) yesterday and not inviting yours truly. This despite urgent pleas on this end to please allow early looksees of Toronto Film Festival selections in order to allow more time to see as many films as possible. I’d like to catch over 35 films in Toronto, but I realistically expect to see, at best, 25 or so.

Thanks also to the good samaritans at Warner Bros. for blowing off repeated requests to see a 2 pm screening today of Steven Soderbergh‘s The Informant! It’s been shown a few times on both coasts and isn’t faring too badly. One guy quite liked it. It reportedly exudes a sort of arch and jocular tone with a kind of robust, attitude-conveying score by Marvin Hamlisch, of all people. In any case the deal in seeing pre-Toronto films is usually “hold your water until you get to Toronto,” which is fine with me. I don’t break my word on this stuff.

The bottom line is that smiles and courtesies are easy and productive because they tend to encourage reciprocity in kind, but that walking around with an attitude chip on your shoulder is its own self-fulfilling karma. Life is always more difficult when certain personalities enter the room. Despite a peace-pipe overture from WB’s departing marketing guy Don Buckley last December, I felt obliged to contact Clint Eastwood directly at the same time in order to somehow wangle an opportunity to see Gran Torino in a timely fashion because the gracious WB p.r. staff wasn’t reaching out. Clint did me a solid and good for him, but wouldn’t it be loverly if certain people could pop a Xanex and learn to chill down?

In addition to the already-tipped Up In The Air, The Road, An Education and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, I’m told that Marco Bellocchio‘s Vincere, Todd Solondz‘s Life During Wartime and Jacques Audiard‘s A Prophet will also play at the Telluride Film Festival, which kicks off two days from now. There’s also a hazy rumor about Michael Moore‘s Capitalism: A Love Story turning up.

I’m also pleased and comforted to say that HE has its Telluride correspondent situation more or less wrapped up as of this morning, although anyone else who’d like to pass thoughts, pics and observations along is certainly welcome. Looking forward to it all.

Give credit where due and acknowledge a knockout idea. The guy who suggested a Top Ten, American Idol-like framework on the Oscar telecast — a mad brush stroke of a concept– is video maestro Jamie Stuart, i.e., “mutinyco.” Here’s how he put it at 11:59 am today on The Hot Blog: “They need to treat the nominees as a top 10 list and not ‘nominees.’ And then structure the broadcast around the top 10 like American Idol and gradually count down the vote tabs from #10 to #1 throughout the program to create suspense.”

Is anyone listening? Have ratings not been a problem with the Oscar telecast in recent years? Not enough Eloi viewers, etc.? Well, the show would be through the roof if they went with this idea. On top of which it would be a huge amount of fun. Tom Sherak…seriously! David Poland showed his colors when he called the idea “slightly creepy”

HE is looking for a special Telluride friend or two or three. Last year’s Telluride friend won’t be attending so get in touch. For some reason I’m not feeling all that jacked about some of the films expected to play there. Jason Reitman‘s Up In The Air , which will make the trek, is feeling more and more like a fait accompli thing. The buzz on The Road has been on the “hmmm, yeah, ahem” side. Werner Herzog‘s hoot movie — Bad Lieutenant: New Orleans Port of Call — will, I’m told, play Telluride instead of My Son My Son, What Have Ye Done? Ditto Lone Scherfig‘s An Education. What else?

The air would be too thin to parachute at this height. Or jump out and free-fall for that matter. But if I could snap my fingers and make it happen I’d put on a bright-yellow fireproof jump suit and helmet plus an oxygen tank and mask and jump out and free-fall for I don’t how many miles. (20?) I’d take video on the way down, and I’d twitter about it too.

I’d savor the fall for as long as possible, and then pull the chute and angle myself so I land in Venice or Mar Vista. And then I’d write a story about it. Seriously — I wish I was around to smell that ashy burnt wood-and-sagebrush scent and see the billowing smoke clouds.

All the Luddites and dead-sea-scrollers who were arguing yesterday in favor of keeping the flying monkey and Scarecrow wires visible in Warner Home Video’s forthcoming The Wizard of Oz Blu-ray (or at least keeping some kind of visible-wires edition of the film in a vault somewhere) can fold up their tents and go home. I spoke yesterday with WHV senior vp George Feltenstein and he confirmed what Hitfix’s Drew McWeeny passed along yesterday in the HE comments section, which is that the wires have been digitally erased.

(l.) Warner Home Video senior vp George Feltenstein; witch-and-monkey castle scene from The Wizard of Oz‘s third act; (r.) restoration expert Robert Harris.

Before making the final call, Felstenstein said he went to resoration guru Robert Harris for advice, and that Harris’s basic mantra was that “if 1939 audiences didn’t see the wires when they saw the film in theatres, then present-day audiences shouldn’t see them on the Blu-ray.”

And 1939 audiences didn’t see the wires due to the state of projection technology and the three-strip Technicolor alignment process being what they were some 70 years ago, along with the general coarseness of 1939-era film stock.

“To be precise,” Harris explained this morning, “what matters is to recreate the look and texture of the original film, as seen by 1939 audiences. While by scanning original negatives we do get an image of slightly higher resolution, it’s important to make certain that the extra detail doesn’t expose things that were never meant to be seen.”

The Oz Blu-ray will be out on Tuesday, 9.29, following a series of special promotional screenings across the country including a special New York Film Festival showing on Saturday, 9.,26.

I asked Feltenstein why Warner Home Video’s “Murderer’s Row” trio — The Wizard of Oz, North by Northwest and Gone With the Wind (the last two of which will be available by mid November) — were scanned in 8K when 4K is considered to be as good if not better than 35mm film resolution-wise. “For the future,” Feltenstein said. “We want to be ready for the next expansion or upgrade in high-def viewing, so we won’t have to go back and re-scan them again.”

We both agreed that (a) it’s an essential thing for all large-format films to find their way onto Blu-ray sooner rather than later (a no-brainer), (b) it would be a welcome thing for Paramount Home Video to one day re-master Byron Haskin‘s War of the Worlds (1953) with the wires holding up the Martian space ships digitally erased (ditto), and (c) that it’ll be great when other Alfred Hitchcock films (like Vertigo especially, having been filmed in large-format VistaVision) get the Blu-ray treatment also.

Feltenstein — gracious, highly spirited, obviously super-bright– said he’s a daily HE reader, and that I should feel free to get in touch any time. Great!

It’s awfully nice to have a couple of real film guys — serious Catholics, I mean — back on the At The Movies beat. So who will be the Roger Ebert (i.e., the cerebral, highly knowledgable know-it-all) and who will be the Gene Siskel (the “yes but” guy who comes from a gut place as well as a head place and will sometimes say “naah, not buying it, this is bullshit”)?

My sense is that both A.O. Scott and Michael Philips are Genes at heart. They’re both trying to emphasize their Roger aspects right now, but it’ll eventually boil down to a Gene vs. Gene thing. Or maybe that’s just what I want to see. I know that gut skepticism is generally more fun to hang with than impassioned dweeby cinephile musings.

My only concern (and I’m not trying to be an asshole) is that Scott’s hair is too closely clipped. He needs to exude a little more of that slightly frazzle-haired coffeehouse poet thing — more suede and jeans, less starch in his shirt, maybe a toke or two of pot.

So what happened to the video? It played when I first posted and now it’s saying it’s no longer available. No, wait…it’s back. What?

You have to get to those other things — ad pitches, Toronto details, Apple/iPhone crap — you’ve been meaning to get to for the last two or three weeks. So you get into this stuff while tapping out the usual column items and stories, only fewer than usual.

And before you know it it’s gotten to be 3:30 or 4 pm and the screening you were going to attend has been cancelled and you really need to take the garbage out and go to the hardware store and print out a document and stuff like that. Then a phone interview happens — good stuff, good fellow, lovely speaking.

But soon after that you turn around and all these things have happened in the online movie world that you haven’t noted or commented upon. So you try and get into this stuff and somehow…ahhh. Maybe because the ad/Toronto/iPhone stuff is still dangling and throwing off sparks like a loose power wire. The day settles down, HBO tries to do what it can and the good old nutso-anxiety currents are pulsing. And then sleep somehow slips in and takes over around 11 pm or so. At least I’m not an insomniac.

And then you have a nightmare about some video of you doing something foolish or intemperate going up on YouTube and your life imploding big-time, and then you wake up and realize it’s okay. You’re so relieved you’re almost weeping. And then you dream about seeing Mick Jagger on Broome Street with a gray overcoat and a thick head of gray hair. Then you start to really wake up at 5 am and the first thought of the day is “uh-oh…my bad.”

So you half sit up and check out the latest Twitters and then dawn begins to break and it’s back to square one. I feel like I’m in a Roman Polanski film. No, not The Tenant. The Pianist, I’m thinking. With maybe a little Repulsion thrown in.

I’ve been as anxious as the next guy to see Nowhere Boy, Sam Taylor Wood‘s biopic about the young John Lennon in Liverpool. I’ve written about it several times, praised Matt Greenhalgh‘s script (saying it “has the same concise, straight-from-the-shoulder British scruffiness that his Greenhalgh’s script for Control had”), expressed interest in Kristin Scott Thomas‘s portrayal of Aunt Mimi, etc. But I’m thinking the good vibes may be over.

(l.) Aaron Johnson as John Lennon in Nowhere Boy; (r.) ex-Beatle Pete Best sometimes around 1961 or ’62.

The reason is that after seeing the above still of Aaron Johnson playing Lennon (and presumably looking out upon Liverpool’s Mersey River), I experienced severe disappointment on three levels. Actually, make that four.

One, Lennon had light honey-brown hair and Johnson’s hair looks either dark brown or jet black. How many brain cells did it take for Wood to say to the movie’s hairdresser at the start of production, “Okay, Lennon’s hair was light brown so let’s make sure Aaron’s hair is as dark as Elvis Presley‘s was…perfect!” I warned Wood not to do this in a piece that ran last January (i.e., two months before Nowhere Boy began shooting), to wit: “They’d better get the hair color right — light honey-brown. If they screw this part up they’re dead.” And Wood screwed it up!

Two, this photo told me that Johnson doesn’t really resemble Lennon at all. You could sense Lennon’s impertinent and somewhat snippy personality in his features. Johnson looks like a doleful Italian longshoreman or short-order cook. If he resembles anyone, it’s ex-Beatle Pete Best — i.e., the drummer who got fired in 1962 to make way for Ringo Starr. Obviously Johnson’s performance could make all the difference. But I’m really steaming about the hair-color thing. You just don’t mess with hair when you’re trying to physically be someone as well as re-animate their spirit.

And three, Lennon had a somewhat large, distinctive and pointed British honker with a very pronounced bridge. Johnson’s nose looks nothing like this — it’s a thicker, rounded-off, slightly bent-to-the-right nose that isn’t the least bit Lennon-y. Wood could have told the makeup people to make it right, but she didn’t. Was the idea to make Johnson resemble Lennon as little as possible?

And look at the 19 year-old kid Wood chose to play Paul McCartney. His name is Thomas Sangster, and his hair color is wrong also — it’s too light. (Unless, of course, Wood had it darkened for the film.) Look at the picture below — does anyone think Sangster resembles McCartney even faintly? He doesn’t look like Macca — he looks like a chipmunk. Look at him! At best he could possibly play a 13 year-old version of George Harrison. Is Wood insane?

I have to be honest. The hair cock-ups suggest that all kinds of other things may be wrong with Nowhere Boy. If you get the hair-color wrong (something that’s easy to get right), the odds are you’re going to screw up in other ways. People tend to be consistent, I mean. If you have dishes stacked two feet high in your kitchen sink, you probably don’t brush your teeth or pay your bills on time. I’m feeling a little queasy about it now. This is a blade of grass that may tell the tale. I still like the script but all bets are off until further notice. I smell trouble.

The key sentence in Katrina Onstad‘s profile of director Atom Egoyan in yesterday’s N.Y. Times reads as follows: “A complex, Egoyan-esque meta-narrative has been imposed on the film that was supposed to be [Egoyan’s] most direct” — i.e, Chloe, an emotionally-intimate drama that will play at the Toronto Film Festival. “It’s now the tragic movie about marriage during which one very famous marriage ended so tragically.

Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore in Atom Egoyan’s Chloe.

Onstad refers, of course, to Chloe star Liam Neeson having lost his actress wife, Natasha Richardson, last March when she died from a head injury caused by a bizarre skiiing accident. The tragedy occured as Chloe was nearing completion of shooting in Toronto. Neeson left the shoot for a brief period, saw to his family and his wife’s burial, and returned for a final couple of days of filming.

Egoyan tells Onstad about how Neeson “pulled him aside on the set and told him of Ms. Richardson’s fall. ‘He’d just talked with her, and everything seemed to be okay. But there was a feeling of: ‘You should go.’ And it just changed the course of everything.'”

“First you think, ‘Oh my God’…the human side takes over, and you try to proceed in a way that’s respectful and honorable,” Chloe producer Ivan Reitman tells Onstad. “But there are always one’s financial obligations. Films involve hundreds of lives.” A flood of insurers and completion bonders came on the set, and everyone went over the script, altering sequences for to give Neeson time to attend Richardson’s funeral and whatnot.

“But within days he quietly returned to Toronto in a private plane, undetected by the news media,” Onstad writes. “‘He conducted himself in an extraordinary manner,’ Mr. Reitman recalled. ‘He was under pressure from the sadness of what had happened, and he channeled it into the performance of those two days.'”

“Over the summer Mr. Egoyan attended test screenings of Chloe with audiences in Los Angeles and Toronto, reviewing the feedback with Mr. Reitman. The response has been extremely positive, Mr. Egoyan said; no clarity issues.”

Chloe director Atom Egoyan, costar Amanda Seyfried

I’ve read the Chloe script. It’s an intriguing, mildly erotic, better-than-half-decent thing about a middle-aged wife (Julianne Moore) hiring a young prostitute (Amanda Seyfried) to try and get her middle-aged husband (Neeson) to cheat on her. It’s actually rather good. Written by a pro. The story takes some interesting turns, but it’s on the restrained and earnest side. I don’t recall any hot madness in it, but maybe I read it too quickly.

But I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t admit to having I have a little man inside telling me that Chloe may underwhelm on some level. Part guess, part intuition. Haven’t Egoyan’s films been generally seen as underwhelming in this and that way for the last several years? (I’m not trying to be an asshole but for me The Sweet Hereafter was his last truly stirring film.) Why wasn’t Chloe chosen to open TIFF? Why are distributors being stand-offish? I’m just asking. I have no dog in this fight, although — honestly? — I want to see Chloe because I suspect it may contain certain oblique echoes. Okay, so I’m a tabloid-reading lowlife.

“It will have interesting overtones because it is about how precious a marriage is,” Egoyan tells Onstad. “Maybe it will always be known as the film Liam was working on when that happened. But ultimately we finished the film, and Liam is magnificent in it. Now all we can do is wait and see.”

Disney’s decision to buy Marvel (i.e., hundreds upon hundreds of Marvel-created characters and storylines) for $4 billion is such glorious news that I can’t stand it. The identity of the corporate entity that will henceforth be free to exploit the Marvel elements is a huge thing for me personally. Well, not really, but I’m sure it’s a big deal for millions of Marvel fans worldwide. Okay, maybe not.

The only angle of any interest is whether or not this will serve to bland down the Marvel brand and take things in a kind of corporate Mickey Mouse direction. Wouldn’t this give Disney the force to veto any edge-pushing content from future Marvel character and creations? What’s the last genuinely cool and edgy film to come out of Disney culture? Would Iron Man have been the same film if Disney had been pulling the strings?

Transferring ownership of a major brand from corporate entity A to corporate entity B is a meaningless thing. All 21st Century entertainment corporations are invested in selling the same basic heroin. And make no mistake — Marvel mythology is in the business of pushing opiates to the masses. No clear light can come of this, and I will not go “hoo! hoo!” about this deal like all the other fansite monkeys out there. I will not wave and shout as Jack Hawkins‘ Quintus Arrius walks up the steps to greet George Relph‘s Tiberius Ceasar.