The universal theme in Revolutionary Road is conveyed in a mid-point scene in which Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Frank, taking a walk in the woods, sardonically mentions “the hopeless emptiness of the whole life here.” In response to this Michael Shannon‘s truth-telling loose cannon, walking with Frank, says that “plenty of people are on to the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.”

Snicker if you want and call this a variation on the Woody Allen/Annie Hall view that all of human existence is divided into the camps of the miserable and the horrible, but the Road theme that will connect, I believe, with general ticket buyers and Academy members is the general feeling that “this is not working, this is not it, this is not fulfilling — and we need to free ourselves from the trap.”

This is obviously a time of change and turnover, and if anything brought about the election of Barack Obama it was a majority of people recognizing and saying the above in a present-day context. Moviegoers will initially relate to Frank and April Wheeler as tragic figures, but as you get into the film an idea takes shape that they’re also echo-metaphors for what’s vaguely wrong now, or at least as symbols of the need to get rid of what’s taking us all down.

In serious artistic-cred terms (as opposed to counting hands in a high-school popularity poll), the Best Picture race has been radically altered by the arrival of Revolutionary Road. It is the new King Shit among the ’08 power-punchers — films that reflect some aspect of the real grit out there and say “this could be about you.” As I wrote last night, it’s “the strongest heavyweight drama I’ve seen all year so far…a corrosive and heartbreaking masterwork.”

As I also wrote yesterday, “A Best Picture winner has to be a manifestation of someone’s idea of a great, drop-dead, grand-or-penetrating-theme art film or it has to get people emotionally in a big way. Sorry, but them’s the rules.” Revolutionary Road obviously treds familiar ground (the old suburbia-sucks, let-me-outta-here mantra), but without question it’s a manifestation of the latter.

The only other film that truly towers over the rest is the film that very few of the elite critics will stand behind because (a) they have eyes but will not see or (b) they lack the cojones to stand up to the conventional wisdom that a film has to be at least semi-commercial to be Oscar-worthy — Steven Soderbergh‘s Che. Re-order your thinking on this concept lest you imperil your immortal souls. Choose your heroes and champions based on the criteria of the Movie Gods, not the likes and dislikes of the oafs and serfs who pay to see movies down at the mall….good heavens.

Soderbergh’s lack of interest in even beginning to attempt to “entertain” the popcorn-munchers is not a plus sign in and of itself, but critics and smart industry viewers should at least be able to see what’s going on here and at least give credit where due. Che is the pure and even made majestic, the telling of a two-act story that could only have been lessened by being shaped into “drama.” It is naturalism in the rough, unpretentious verite magnificence, poetry in the details, an au natural hang-out-with-a-legendary-figure presented as a form of truth both literal and eternal. And yet it is so stand-alone “out there” that you can’t really call it drama.

Besides these two you have Slumdog Millionaire, a rouser that is obviously getting people emotionally. A fevered and sweeping Dickens tale, but, in the view of some, a bit too manipulative and willfully “extreme” to register alongside the cinematic distinctions of Revolutionary Road and Che. It may be the front-runner right now, and it may win the Best Picture Oscar, but we’ll see.

And Doubt, which is exquisite and immaculate on its own stage-play-transferred-into-cinematic-tension terms but isn’t quite as jolting or emotionally affecting or profound, even, as (no offense to John Patrick Shanley, Meryl Streep, Roger Deakins, Philip Seymour Hoffman and everyone else involved) Revolutionary Road .

Milk doesn’t have the heft or the chops or the emotional pull of Revolutionary Road or Che — I’m sorry but as strong and earnest and enhanced by Sean Penn as it is, Milk is a marginally lesser film than these two.

Frost/Nixon is a tight, well-written and admirably assembled drama that delivers a metaphor about the tendency of truth to hide its face until all other options and avenues have been exhausted. But it is primarily a performance film by the expert technique and sadness of Frank Langella‘s Richard Nixon. It’s not the stunner and soul-shaker that Revolutionary Road is, and not the majestic “other” that Che is. I’m sorry but there it is.

I have yet to see Gran Torino, Benjamin Button and The Reader so we’ll see what happens there.

I will be pledging allegiance and affection for Tom McCarthy‘s The Visitor from now to Kingdom Come. WALL*E is brilliant but it is the winner of the Best Animated Feature Oscar — it needs to stay on its own side of the Rio Grande. And if they gave an Oscar to the Best Tweener Drama of the Year, Rod Lurie‘s Nothing But the Truth would win hands down.

Last night’s Los Angeles DGA screening of The Curious Case at Benjamin Button was stopped after running a half-hour, according to In Contention‘s Kris Tapley. A “color channel on the digital projector” made the image look “washed out,” and so director of photography Claudio Miranda had publicists call director David Fincher to explain the problem, and thereafter the plug was pulled. A makeup screening will happen Saturday.

Tapley says “we liked what we saw. And after just 30 minutes, I’m pretty sure the film will take the Oscars for Best Makeup and Best Visual Effects walking away…pure magic.” Spoken like an elite mafia hitman who specializes in quiet kills. Hearing that a film has great technical pleasures is like hearing from a friend who’s set you up with a blind date that “she has a great personality.” The more people talk about Button‘s tech triumphs, the more this film is going to get shunted aside in people’s minds as a “very admirable but no Best Picture Oscar” type deal.

If I was a Paramount publicist working on Button, I would put out a mass e-mail to all journalists, columnists and bloggers saying, “Will you guys give us a break with the technical praisings (visual effects, photography, makeup) already? You’re killing us !”

N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis speaking (but not appearing) on the history of the screen vampire, from F.W. Murnau‘s Nosferatu and Max Shreck to the current “abstinence figure” vampire played by Robert Pattinson in Twilight — a figure who is “catnip to anyone with OJD (obsessive Jonas Brothers disorder),” as she says in her review.

Nikki Finke revealed the the names of four publicists cut loose yesterday by PMK/HBH: Craig Bankey, Jennifer Holiner, Andy Snyder and Karen Oberman. I’m sorry. My heart goes out. If I ran a big company I’d never let people go just before the holidays. I wouldn’t care how much I’d suffer financially — I’d wait until January to chop heads. More humane that way.

Revolutionary Road is a corrosive and heartbreaking masterwork. Sam Mendes‘ best film yet is exquisitely cut, blended and calibrated with superb music by Thomas Newman and legendary performances from Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet and Michael Shannon. It’s the strongest heavyweight drama I’ve seen all year so far — much more searing and moving than I expected.

During Thursday night’s post-Revolutionary Road screening q & a at the AMC Lincoln Square — (l. to r.) moderator Glenn Kenny, costar Michael Shannon, star Kate Winslet — Thursday, 11.20.08, 9:25 pm

Kenny, Shannon, Winslet — Thursday, 10.24.06, 6:25 pm

A noted filmmaker who read this morning’s link to Patrick Goldstein‘s story that named Paramount’s Brad Weston as the guy who passed on Twilight two years ago when it was being developed by MTV Films has a word of caution. Or lament, rather. Here’s how he put it:

“When Goldstein ran that story, it increased the level of paranoia in the studios and now people aren’t as likely to put projects into turnaround, which is what saves or releases some projects and results in their being made into films at other studios,” he said.

“Without turnaround we’re all going to miss out on a lot of great movies because stalled projects are now more likely to just sit there and collect dust. It’s going to increase this chilling effect.”

“Let’s say I have a property that’s owned by a studio and it’s not working out,” he said. “In this situation a studio exec saying to me ‘fine, I’ll put it into turnaround and let you have it, take it across the street to Warner Bros. and God speed’ is usually an act of benevolence. It saves a project from death.

“Now with this Weston thing, a lot more studio execs and going to say ‘sure, I let you take it elsewhere and then two years from now I’ll read about how I’m the asshole who let a big hit go to some other studio? Fuck it, I’m going to hang onto it. I’d rather have the project die here than have it go elsewhere than have an article turn up down the road that’ll make me look stupid.’

“Fear of failure has always been a greater force in this town than dreams of success,” he coincluded. “This is a town based on fear, and now that fear, that paranoia, has just been increased.”

Australia (20th Century Fox, 11.26) is extreme cinema by way of director Baz Luhrmann‘s massive ego. We all know Luhrmann is no fan of naturalism, but Australia‘s manifestation of ultramagical reality made me want to plotz. Call Luhrmann the anti-Budd Boetticher or Anthony Mann or Sam Fuller — a sworn aesthetic enemy of any solidly workmanlike approach to muscular outdoor filmmaking and telling forthright tales. Australia is a wackazoid big-canvas thing, and God help anyone who comes to it not willing to be injected with Baz serum.

Australia director Baz Luhrmann; Wizard of Oz costar Frank Morgan

And that’s fine if you can roll with it. I couldn’t. It put me off. It’s too spiked with mescaline. And I say this as someone “experienced.”

Partly a love story, partly about Nicole Kidman‘s strangely immobile forehead, partly about an ambitious Red River-ish cattle drive and lastly — you could almost say anecdotally — about the bombing of Darwin, Australia, in early 1942, there isn’t a frame or line or gesture in this whopper of a movie hasn’t been hugely futzed with by way of emotional investment and/or digitally reconstitution. To me it felt just as hyper, cranked up and visually steroid as Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge, Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet , etc. It’s nuts.

What is the primary focus of Australia? Baz Luhrmann’s big-dick imagination, and his determination and ability to visualize every last aspect of every last drop of rock-your-world razmatazz. He achieves that. A less talented fellow wouldn’t have tried, much less dreamt of such a thing.

All the rest of the elements and components — Kidman, the scenery, the cattle, the brawny and bearded Hugh Jackman, the cute Aboriginal kid Brandon Walters, the loutish big bellies in the bars, the evil-icious cattle barons David Wenham and Bryan Brown, the man-eating alligators, the Japanese planes that attack a tiny little island with nothing on it but a chapel, a minister and a bunch of intinerant children, the bloated and relentlessly rum-swilling Jack Thompson, David Gulpill ‘s Aboriginal spirit figure (called “King George”) and all the rest of it — are strictly secondary.

It all comes down to The Wizard of Oz, which is frequently and blatantly referenced. The bones of the story are told by Kidman to Walters, Judy Garland clips are shown twice, “Over The Rainbow” is sung, hummed and orchestrated. The metaphor is simple, mate. This is a film set in a country commonly referred to (certainly in the pages of old-time Variety) as Oz, and Luhrmann is the wizard — the puller of strings and levers behind the curtain, the kindly fellow pulling off a flim-flam, the rascal with the booming amplified voice, the releaser of clouds of billowing black smoke and other awesome effects.

Trust me — that’s all this movie is about. Look at me, I’m a wild man, look at what I can do, I’m so extreme I can barely stand it, welcome to my world, blah blah. It’s certainly eye-filling and, okay, emotionally gripping toward the end, but it taxes the soul and sets the foot a tapping.

Nikki Finke reported this morning that she’s “hearing there’ll be economy-related bloodletting in the form of layoffs of even very senior reps at major entertainment public relations firms before the end of the year,” adding that “some longtime vets who handle big clients [may be] getting fired in the next 24 hours.”

A senior p.r. exec told me he’s heard nothing about this, but if it happens he won’t be all that surprised.

“Layoffs are happening in every sector,” he said, “and of course historically the entertainment industry is funded by credit and everybody knows that has dried up in recent months, and so people are gearing for a downturn in production and production starts. Plus there are still issues related to the unresolved SAG strke situation and so a lot of companies are preparing to cope along these lines.

“The next six months are going to be very difficult, especially for p.r. agencies with major corporate clients. A loss of a major corporate client can really hurt a company. Those companies are owned by conglomerates and there are numbers that need to be met on a quarterly basis, and that translate into some hard decisions.”

Issues of quality and artistic merit aside, my Ray Walston Martian antennae readings are telling me that in terms of emotional mob-approval signals, Danny Boyle ‘s Slumdog Millionaire is beating out David Fincher‘s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in the Best Picture contest as it currently stands. I’m just talking about a snapshot on a moving train, mind. Ten minutes from now we could be looking at different scenery.

But it’s fair, right now, to make a spitball call and say that Millionaire might be taking over the front-runner position. No, it is taking over. A lot of folks are applauding, loving it (Real Geezers included) and telling their friends, and that’s the bottom line in this game.

I’m saying this based on the various meh reactions to Button that have been flying around for the last couple of weeks. The first high-profile, big-crowd Button screening happens tonight at L.A.’s DGA theatre, and the first big New York screening happens next Monday night so it’s obviously a little early to be making any firm calls. But so far I’m just not detecting any kind of “wow, blown away” reactions to the Fincher flick, although I’ve been told that one former big-time journalist is a huge fan. I’m sure there are others. I may be one as of next Monday evening.

I know that older, seemingly more thoughtful early-bird viewers have posted admiring comments about Button, and I’m certainly not writing it off. (Please understand that!) But the general rule-of-thumb is that any presumed Best Picture favorite has to have a detectable wave of emotional enthusiasm behind it, and for whatever reason — so far, at least — the middle-aged-men-getting-all-teary reactions to Button that were passed along a few weeks back haven’t manifested with the smarty-pants know-it-alls. Reactions have basically been “good but not great, no crying at the end, great technical achievement, beautiful photography, fine film,” etc.

And reactions like that are basically an “almost but no cigar.” A Best Picture winner has to be a manifestation of someone’s idea of a great, drop-dead, grand-or-penetrating-theme art film or it has to get people emotionally in a big way. Sorry, but them’s the rules.

I’m not even mentioning the measured reaction to Button that Oprah Winfrey conveyed when her Brad Pitt-Cate Blanchette Button special aired yesterday. Say what you will about Winfrey but she’s thought to be a kind of emotional geiger counter regarding the penetration power of certain movies and books, and a friend who caught the show thought it was significant that she used the words “fascinating” and “interesting” more than once to describe her reactions to Button. Make of this what you will.

In a way, it’s good for Button to be out of the font-runner slot. Now it doesn’t have anything to prove. Now it can sink or swim or soar based on what it is or isn’t, and what people are saying to each other on a day-by-day, screening-by-screening basis. And that’s fine.