If you could somehow capture and compress all the rage and contempt in the reader comments about this “Utterly Correct” story and convert it into liquid fuel….

“All the companies are laying off employees. There will be fewer deals. Budgets will be tighter. It will shrink the business, I’m sure. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. When you look back on some of these weekends when you have five, six movies opening the same day, they cannibalize each other. So with fewer films it’s better for all concerned. Even the consumer — it’s easier to decide what to see.” — producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Confessions of a Shopaholic) speaking on the current economic climate in Hollywood.

“…and we’re gonna catch the hell. Gonna be pretty goddam bad. [But] that’s all right. These things happen every so often. Five years, ten years. Gets rid of the bad blood. Been ten years since the last one.” — Clemenza (Richard Castellano) in The Godfather.

1999 is commonly regarded as an excellent movie year, and just as commonly 2008 is seen as a relatively weak one. I didn’t realize how weak until I spent some time today looking over a month’s worth of HE clips from November 2006. Volver, Children of Men, The Lives of Others, Tsotsi, United 93, Babel, Pan’s Labyrinth, Little Miss Sunshine, The Queen, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada — I hereby nominate ’06 as a classic year also. The movies weren’t just better then, but this column, I regret to say, was a more engaging and inventive read.

This is hilarious — a projection riff about Baz Luhrman‘s Australia written in November ’06. Red River…hah!

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” — quote attributed to Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Thomas, used in the opening credits of Amy Berg‘s Deliver Us From Evil and initially mentioned in this column 2 years and 3 months ago.

In his review of The International, N.Y. Press critic Armond White says that Clive Owen‘s “perpetually sullen, unshaven mug provokes dreadful flashbacks of his woebegone heroics in the ludicrous apocalypse-thrill-ride Children of Men.” We’re all familiar with Owen’s sullenness, but equating Children of Men with some kind of “dreadful”? It was my choice for Best Picture of 2006, and I knew whereof I spoke when I wrote this initial review.

White has to be the contrarian; he has to blow your mind, piss on your temple, show disgust for one of your all-time favorite films, etc. It’s his handle, I get that, but still.

White also provides a list of “recent feel-bad movies about international politics,” including Children of Men, Michael Clayton, Lord of War, Traitor, Rendition, Syriana, Redacted, In the Valley of Elah, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Kingdom, Stop-Loss, Vantage Point, the Bourne [films] and War, Inc., and says they’re all “essentially about glamorous cynicism.” Well, there’s obviously no way to address current or futuristic global political concerns without coming to some pessimistic-cynical conclusions, so the question is when making a film about this is do you make the world of your film appear glamorous or not? Which obviously could mean stylistically avant garde. If I were producing such a film, I would certainly approve of any glamour additive that didn’t distract from the aesthetic essence.

According to the photo editor of London’s Daily Mail, the below photo, chosen to illustrate an article by reverse-mortgage pitchman Robert Wagner called “I blamed myself for Natalie Wood’s death: Robert Wagner on the night his wife disappeared,” is a shot of Wagner and wife Natalie Wood in All The Fine Young Cannibals.

If the woman in this photo is Natalie Wood I’m Alanis Morissette. Look at her eyes and her teeth. Tell me she doesn’t summon thoughts of a flesh-eating ghoul ready to take a bite out of Wagner. Tell me she doesn’t look like a candidate to costar four years hence in Roger Corman‘s The Tomb of Ligea. (A reader informs that the actress is actually Susan Kohner, who retired in 1964 and later became the mother of Chris and Paul Weitz.)

So who’s worse at the end of the day? The Daily Mail photo editor or the woman who mentioned The Mysterious Case of Benjamin Button on the Chris Matthews Show this morning?

On the “tell me something I don’t know” portion of this morning’s Chris Matthews Show, a female guest announced that the first film that the Obamas had watched in the White House screening room was The Mysterious Case of Benjamin Button. Nobody coughed, smirked…nothing. Imagine the chuckling mockery that would result if I wrote a piece that referred to Treasury Secretary William Geithner. The Matthews blooper says something about the public’s attitude about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I think. But what?

The mystifying if not ridiculous success of Michael Bay and Marcus Nispel‘s Friday the 13th — $20 million yesterday, estimated to bring in over $50 million over the four-day President’s Day holiday — at least underlines the old truism about the movie business being recession- or depression-proof. Or that it tends to be, certainly, when there’s something playing that people unencumbered by taste are looking to see. A good thing, that. The sexual metaphor of slasher movies translates so fully. The dumbest people in the world get it, and that’s fine because every so often they need to feel they’re in on the joke.

Thematically-linked Blu-ray double features…sure. Although I’m wondering if I can stand to watch In Cold Blood again. Everyone has limits and there’s something awfully tedious and on-the-nose about it. Maybe it’s the way the Quincy Jones score sometimes tries to underscore the sentiment in a scene when it’s already dead obvious what you’re supposed to be feeling. (I hate scores that do that.) Maybe it’s Scott Wilson‘s performance, which seems too soft and charming given the notorious psychopath he’s supposed to be playing (i.e., Dick Hickock). It’s just that Conrad Hall‘s black-and-white widescreen cinematography is so choice.

From Bernnet Miller’s Capote

Robert Blake in Richard Brooks’ In Cold Blood.

“I think we can safely say that a woman like Gwyneth Paltrow has never in the history of NYC fallen in love with a 30-something” — a downbeat donkey, played by Joaquin Phoenix — “who lives with his parents in Brighton Beach.” So said Ben, a N.Y. Times commenter, early this morning about James Gray‘s Two Lovers. “Which pretty much ruins the movie as a serious work before you even see it, since it’s constantly reminding you of its inauthenticity.”

Add this gripe to my own about Vinessa Shaw being poorly cast as a slightly-too-nice Brooklyn neighborhood girl, and you’ve got both female leads in this film drawing flak.

Shaw is “too Fairfield County pretty, too poised and delicate to be a borough girl,” I wrote. “There are exceptions galore in real life, of course, but men and women from Brooklyn and Queens (i.e., those born and raised) tend to exude a slight coarseness. A coarseness that’s often vibrant and agreeable (I know New Yorkers and it’s not a cliche), but is also saddled, I feel, with a lack of curiosity in other realms.

“A wanting for worldly finesse, I mean. An Adrianna-from-The Sopranos quality. Not to mention that happily hunkered- down attitude about being ‘borough’ — a life of eating pizza, not quite dressing the right way and failing to learn to speak French or play piano. Not to mention the distinctive ethnic features and honky accents. (I’ve known exactly one woman in my life who was raised in Brooklyn but doesn’t look it or talk it.)”

That untitled Michael Moore documentary mentioned as a possible Cannes 2009 entry by Screen International‘s Mike Goodridge is either (a) some phantom doc no one’s ever heard of or (b) Moore’s currently shooting film about Wall Street chicanery which he’s said will be about “the biggest swindle in American history” as well as “the greatest crime story ever told.”

If it’s the latter it seems unlikely that Moore would have anything to show three months from now since he’s still looking for Wall Street veterans to come forward and spill the beans. That means he’s in the earlyish stages. If anything, I’m guessing that Moore will have, at best, a 15 minute reel to show next May, something to drum up interest for next year.

“I am in the middle of shooting my next movie and I am looking for a few brave people who work on Wall Street or in the financial industry to come forward and share with me what they know,” Moore posted last Wednesday on his site.

“Based on those who have already contacted me, I believe there are a number of you who know ‘the real deal’ about the abuses that have been happening. You have information that the American people need to hear. I am humbly asking you for a moment of courage, to be a hero and help me expose the biggest swindle in American history.

“All correspondence with me will be kept confidential. Your identity will be protected and you will decide to what extent you wish to participate in telling the greatest crime story ever told.”