“How will exhibition woes be fixed?,” writes Salt Lake Tribune critic Sean P. Means. “By audiences who stop being complacent and start complaining. The first rule of effective complaining: If the film’s out of focus is to go find a manager. Don’t just yell ‘focus!’ — the projectionist is in a soundproof room next to a clattering machine and can’t hear you. If enough of the ticket-buying public raises a stink, exhibitors will get the message and start improving conditions.”

Means wrote the piece because a huge snafu in the projection of Charlie Wilson’s War for Salt Lake City critics. (The kid in the booth showed it with a 2.35 to 1 aspect ratio instead of 1.85 to 1.) Thanks for quoting from last Wednesday’s HE post about the substandard Sweeney Todd showing at the Loew’s AMC Boston Common, but I didn’t say it was “atrocious” — it was merely irritating, unarousing, substandard.

The Boston Society of Film Critics has my respect for giving Starting Out in the Evening‘s Frank Langella their Best Actor award. Original thinking, outside the roster of usual suspects…good stuff. Langella’s performance as an over-the-hill Manhattan novelist is very skilled, restrained and almost somnambulant — the holding-back element is why it works so well.

Two side-thoughts: Here we go again and due respect, but I don’t think Langella’s work holds a candle to Benicio del Toro‘s performance in Things We Lost in the Fire — it’s a different type of performance, obviously, but it doesn’t achieve anything like the catharsis that you get from Del Toro’s Jerry the junkie. (2) Everyone’s been assuming all along that Langella’s performance as Richard Nixon in Ron Howard‘s Frost/Nixon (out sometime in the late summer or early fall of ’08) will be a big score for him — I had thought this might kibbosh a chance of Evening acting awards this year.

I was bored with Paul Schrader‘s The Walker, which you can’t help but unfavorably compare to Schrader’s very similar American Gigolo (’80). Woody Harrelson‘s lead fellow, an effete Southern- fried gay guy, is a huge problem. That measured Southern drawl of his, for one thing — he delivers 80% of his lines with the same inflections. And the toupee, especially. No self-respecting gay man today would wear a rug that looks like so much like a rug. It’s the kind of thing that follically-challenged actors used to wear in Hollywood films of the ’50s and early ’60s.

The Boston Society of Film Critics tally (keep updating this post): Best Picture — No Country For Old Men…no Diving Bell after alll! Best Director — Julian Schnabel for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly…holy crap, they’re going to give Diving Bell their Best Picture award! Best Actor — Frank Langella for Starting Out in the Evening… shocker! Best Actress — Marion Cotillard for La Vie en Rose. Best Supporting Actor — Javier Bardem for No Country for Old Men. Best Supporting Actress — Amy Ryan for Gone Baby Gone. Best Original Screenplay — Brad Bird for Ratatouille. Best Cinematography — Janusz Kaminski for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best New Filmmaker — Ben Affleck for Gone Baby Gone. (Gone is a good film with a great ending, but the Beantowners should have stayed away from the hometown loyalty factor.) Best Documentary — Dan Klores‘ Crazy Love. Best Ensemble Acting — Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead.

“A theory on documentaries that strip-mine the 1960s: The less fresh insight the program has to offer, the earlier the Buffalo Springfield song ‘For What It’s Worth’ will turn up on the soundtrack,” N.Y. Times TV reviewer Neil Genzlinger remarked yesterday.

“Written by Stephen Stills, that astonishing song (‘There’s something happening here/What it is ain’t exactly clear’) came to encapsulate ’60s turmoil so perfectly that resorting to it is a subconscious admission by a documentarian: ‘I have nothing to say that Stephen Stills didn’t say better in 2 minutes 41 seconds.”

The song is heard about two minutes into 1968 With Tom Brokaw,” Genzlinger writes. The two-hour doc airs tonight at 9 pm on the History Channel. “Its instantly recognizable two-note opening rings like an alarm bell for the viewer: ‘Warning: regurgitation of a lot of stuff you already know ahead.'” In short, ’60s porn.

The Boston Society of Film Critics will be updating their site “live” as the various awards are debated and voted upon. I don’t know precisely when the voting will begin but the site says everything will be decided by 6 pm. 12:56 pm update: “Watch the site over the next four hours,” I’ve just been told.

Forget yesterday’s $27 million projection for The Golden Compass — now the weekend projection is down to $25 million and change due to a weak 16% Saturday uptick. To what extent, if any, was the Catholic League’s urging that Catholic families avoid this film a wipeout factor? To what extent was it ineffective marketing? To what extent was it the Nicole Kidman/zero sympatico factor? To what extent was it due to audiences being sick of the same old oatmeal? As Jim Verniere‘s 12.7 Boston Herald review began, “”Ready for ‘Harriet Potter and the Chronicles of the Lord of the Golden Compass’?”

Jake Kasdan and Judd Apatow‘s Walk Hard (Sony, 12.21) is my kind of genre spoof — dry, smart, referenced. I chuckled here and there but mostly I smiled at it, and that’s not a bad thing. I absolutely love that this film doesn’t pander or wallow. It’s not trying to make eight year-olds or the ding-dongs who loved Are We Done Yet? roll in the aisles. It’s into the old-time spirit and attitude of SCTV.

John C. Reilly in Walk Hard

Here’s that clip from the first ten minutes of the film.

Truth be told, Walk Hard is one of those comedies that plays a tiny bit funnier when you’re thinking about it the next day than when you’re sitting there in the seat. You know it’s a clever, high-end thing, but at the same time you’re not exactly howling. I’m not much of a laugher at anything, but I love comedies aimed at people who’ve graduated from high school with at least a B-minus average. Either you’re on the wavelength or you’re not.

The only question I have about the box-office is whether star John C. Reilly has the magnetism to bring in the big crowds.

Nobody would ever mistake Nikki Finke for a cineaste, but she was wrong when she wrote yesterday that Walk Hard “spoofs just about every music biopic ever made.” It mainly spoofs one movie — Walk The Line — with some Ray gags sprinkled in.

Before the voting late this afternoon among the Boston and Los Angeles film critics, it needs to be recognized that the resulting announcements (combined with tomorrow afternoon’s calls from the New York Film Critics Circle) are very nearly do-or-die verdicts for Joe Wright‘s Atonement.

It became apparent to me on Friday that this very well-crafted romantic tragedy (which I personally like and admire) is on the ropes, in part due to four significant dings. And to compete or least stand abreast with No Country for Old Men, Atonement will have to nab at least one Best Picture trophy today or tomorrow. If it succeeds, fine…off to the races. But if it gets shut out, it’ll be uh-oh time.

Of course, Atonement can still win the Best Picture Oscar if the L.A., Boston and New York critics shine it on. Academy voters can be myopic when so inclined and will vote by their own standards and prejudices, but a Best Picture contender has to have at least a little cultural fortification — tangible, verifiable support from outside-the-industry knowledgables — and without the imprimatur of having been named Best Picture by the big critics groups it’ll be hard (not impossible but certainly difficult) for Atonement to sustain cred and momentum from mid-December to mid-January.

That’s why I wrote on Friday that the Best Picture situation “may well be decided” by Monday afternoon. To repeat: “I’m not saying that the Atonement shortfall (if and when it happens on Sunday and Monday) will decide things absolutely — obviously it won’t — but it will nonetheless cast a certain light and define the situation in a way that will make the pro-Atonement argument a little harder to sell.”

“Experience, like nastiness, may also prove a dead end in the year ahead. In 1960, the experience card was played by all comers against the young upstart senator from Massachusetts. In Iowa, L.B.J. went so far as to tell voters that they should vote for ‘a man with a little gray in his hair.’ But experience, Kennedy would memorably counter, ‘is like taillights on a boat which illuminate where we have been when we should be focusing on where we should be going.'” — from Frank Rich‘s 12.0.07 N.Y. Times column.

Listen to this HE-edited version of a famous scene from John Ford‘s The Grapes of Wrath. A dirt-poor oakie comes into a diner looking to buy a loaf of bread but he can’t afford to pay more than a dime. Listen to the rest and you’ll be able to follow. The way I’ve cut it, the scene ends where it should — with a truck driver saying “what’s it to ya?”

But listen now to Ford’s version of the scene — the way it actually plays in the film. Ford keeps the camera rolling until the waitress considers the extra-large tip, goes all mushy and says “truck drivers!” Due respect to Ford, but this is my problem with the guy — he’s too sentimental. If Howard Hawks had directed this scene, he would have used the first version.

To hear it from Fantasy Moguls’ Steve Mason, the projected weekend gross of The Golden Compass is “anemic” — worse than disappointing — with an estimated $9 million earned yesterday and a mere $27 million for the weekend. Those are shattering numbers for a movie that cost a reported $200 million. By comparison, The Chronicles of Narnia made $65.5 million on its opening weekend in December 2005. Obviously no joy in Mudville (i.e., the New Line offices) this weekend.

Mason is also asking if this latest torpedo-in-the-hull spells the end of Nicole Kidman‘s run as a top-dollar actress. Compass, Mason notes, is Kidman’s sixth wipeout or short-faller in a row (if you don’t count the moderately passable business being done by Margot at the Wedding). Birth, The Interpreter, Bewitched, Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus and Invasion were all flubs or disappointments.

I’ve been saying this for a long while now. Kidman is a talented actress with mostly excellent taste in projects, but she doesn’t radiate much warmth or empathy and she doesn’t put butts in seats. But she’s had a good run and has a long future ahead of her…just on a lower pay scale. There’s nothing wrong with being Meg Ryan.