Before arriving in Boston I told my son Dylan we needed to see Beowulf in IMAX 3-D, and he said forget it — Boston’s two IMAX theatres (the Mugar Omni and the Simons IMAX theatre-aquarium) just show docs and travelogues. Hard to believe. Hollywood flicks projected in IMAX (and especially IMAX 3-D) are delivering big-time thrills like nothing else these days, but if city folk want to catch the IMAX-ed Beowulf, I Am Legend later this month or The Dark Knight next summer, they’ll have to hump it out to suburban Natick or Reading.

New England Aquarium IMAX Theatre

Were Cinerama, CinemaScope and Todd A-O ignored by Boston exhibitors when they hit the scene in the 1950s? In any business you have to go with the flow and change with the times, so why don’t Beantown exhibs have at least least one Hollywood-friendly IMAX house? Get with the program and hubba-hubba, guys.

A local critic offered an explanation. Boston, he wrote back, “is a big-league film town with a severe resistance to change, a sense of entitlement from the cultural institutions, and a belief that people don’t go ‘downtown’ to see movies but rather stay in the ‘burbs where they already live.

“I do think we’ll be seeing more and more 3D downtown in the coming years — basically as the Loews Common
installs more digital projection — but the real estate is scarce for a new IMAX build, and perhaps and the Aquarium and Mugar Omni don’t want to sully their mission (or simply may not be able to, for any variety of reasons).

“In general exhibition has fled Boston proper,” he explained. “The only two movie theaters left within city limits are the Common and the Fenway. That’s not counting the arthouses in Brookline and Cambridge, and the multiplexes of various size in the inner suburbs, 10 minutes from downtown. This is a far cry from the not-so-old days when there were dozens of theaters in Boston.”

Fox 411’s Roger Friedman reported today that Annette Insdorf, the distinguished critic, film scholar and Columbia University film department chief, bas been elbowed out of the National Board of Review’s executive photoplay committee. If true, this move divests the NBR of its only shred of credibility in dispensing end-of-the-year movie awards. The news comes only one day before the NBR will vote and announce its 2007 winners, and, if confirmed, will obviously make the group seem even more tainted that is has been in the past.

Reportedly heave-ho’ed NBR board member Annette Insdorf; NBR honcho Annie Schulhoif; Fox 411 columnist Roger Friedman

As Friedman reports, the National Board of Review “is otherwise composed of dilettantes and senior citizens who pay around $500 a year as members to watch movies and get their pictures taken with celebrities. [The group] is a kind of a laughingstock among movie press people, the studios and even the actors and directors.

“What’s interesting about the NBR is that despite the membership, the executive photoplay committee makes the ultimate decisions about who, and what, will get awards. Most of those decisions are based on the members’ connections to the studios and who they think will show up for their annual awards show and dinner in early January.

“Insdorf was considered the only sane member of the group, and the only one who would advocate based on merit. With her out of the voting, it’s feared that the much maligned president Annie Schulhof will push through a number of winners less deserving than others.

“Members of the executive photoplay committee are kept secret. But I am told that some other members, all Schulhof pals, include unknowns like ancient mariner Keith Edwards (his credits include [productions by] David Merrick and David Susskind) and 74-year-old Amy Greene-Andrews, the ex-wife of considerably deceased minor producer Milton Greene (1957’s The Prince and the Showgirl).”

And yet, as Friedman notes, “With the Writers Guild strike in full force, the NBR could — in a very weird world — wind up being the only awards show for some time. Picket lines could severely damage if not altogether halt other upcoming awards shows such as the Oscars and Golden Globes.”

Big-screen psychopaths are a kind of close-knit brotherhood. They seem almost genetically linked in being (a) utterly consumed by a ferocious past, (b) possessing the usual smirky, self-amused personality and (c) their general indifference to common-ground values. I don’t know where villainy can go over the next 10 to 50 years, but I know it’s been in the same place for the previous 50. I’m not saying I’m fatigued with this, but will there ever be a new flavor along these lines?

Heath Ledger’s “Joker” in Chris Nolan’s The Dark Knight

Robert Mitchum‘s nutso preacher in Charles Laughton‘s The Night of the Hunter (’55) was an early manifestation, and perhaps the first. Jack Nicholson‘s “Joker” in Tim Burton ‘s Batman was another big gong in this vein. Hannibal Lecter, to some extent. Anton Chigurh, certainly. And now another inhabiting, apparently, is on its way from Heath Ledger‘s “Joker” in Chris Nolan‘s The Dark Knight(7.18.08).

Consider this scene from the opening of Nolan’s upcoming Batman film, which was previewed last Sunday night in the IMAX format in Manhattan, and will be attached to general release prints of I Am Legend (opening 12.14). It’s been described in a 12.3 MTV piece by Josh Horowitz.

William Fichtner, playing a mob-front banker, is about to be dispatched by a masked Ledger at the climax of a bank job: “The criminals in this town used to believe in things,” Fichtner seethes. “Honor. Respect. What do you believe in?” He screams it again, louder: “What do you believe in?”

The mask comes off, and Ledger’s “grinning, scarred face” is revealed at last. “I believe whatever doesn’t kill you simply makes you …” — a pause before the final word — “stranger.”

That line is a little too arch and cocky for Anton Chigurh to have said in No Country for Old Men, but it’s from the same nutter hym book. And I’m wondering again, without implying in any way that Ledger’s performance won’t be a huge kick in the pants, are we stuck with this kind of villain for the rest of our days? Is any actor or director or writer going to come along in five or ten years and do what Mitchum and Laughton did for the era of Davy Crockett, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Bill Haley and the Comets?

The WGA strike situation “doesn’t look good right now,” producer-director-writer Judd Apatow tells the Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell. “I think if you look at what is being offered by the studios, it doesn’t look like they want it to end. I mean, it’s clear they want this strike to continue.

“It would cost very little money to end the strike and [the producers] are basically trying to create a way of paying people so that when the internet explodes, they’ll wind up paying less than they do now to writers. And I don’t think they’re going to get away with it.”

Now, that‘s a gulf and a half. The writers aren’t satisfied with current status quo arrangements and want more, but the producers, to hear it from the well-positioned Apatow, are not only opposed to this but want to pay writers less, in a future-tense sense, than what they’re currently getting.

“The writers really failed to stand up for themselves with the DVD (in a previous contract dispute) and they feel terrible about it,” Apatow continues, “and enough of them will not give up [meaning that the strike] will have to be resolved in a reasonably fair manner.”

Except that the vast majority of heavyweight producers and studio chiefs stopped believing in “fair” when they were 13 years old. Accepting the basic unfairness and occasional brutality of life and adjusting their game plan accordingly is how they came to be big alphas in the first place. “Fair?,” says Peter O’Toole to Jack Hawkins in Lawrence of Arabia as they discuss the campaign to capture Damascus. “What’s ‘fair’ got to do with it? It’s going to happen.”

Why do celebs with money to burn continue to willfully disfigure themselves and risk worldwide embarassment due to inelegant or woefully miscalculated plastic surgery? And why do surgeons perform procedures that could very possibly turn clients into laughing stocks and eventually, one presumes, result is a diminishment of their own professional reputations? These are questions that I wanted answered in Dale Hrabi‘s Radar‘s piece about this bizarre industry, and yet they’re barely addressed.

The deep-down truth is that clients probably understand and perhaps even accept the fact that they may wind up looking like carnival freaks, but they’re willing to risk it and, if necessary, live with it because of a deep-down feeling that the metaphor of aging — which they see as a constant biological advertisement for the loss of power and the inevitability of death — is a much worse thing to cope with on a daily basis.

Downside quote: “No one wants to be the next Meg Ryan, whose 2001 misadventures in lip enhancement left America’s erstwhile sweetheart looking like a duck, a lapse in judgment at which Hollywood still shudders. ‘She basically installed a vagina on her face,’ says producer Clifford Streit (American Psycho), adding helpfully, ‘When your lips get that big, your eyes look too small.'”

Upside quote: “There’s so much bad work in L.A., it’s not even worth discussing. But if people see someone famous who’s 50 years old and looks mysteriously phenomenal, that’s when they start leaning in at the parties and whispering, desperately trying to figure it out,” a source tells Hrabi. The latest focus of such awe, the source says, is Michelle Pfeiffer. “After Hairspray and Stardust came out simultaneously, I don’t know anyone who wasn’t saying, ‘How the hell does she look like that?’ Now everyone thinks they can do it, too.’ If only they knew the secret recipe.”

The badness of a movie is directly proportional to a lot of things. Dave Barry once wrote that the more helicopters a film has, the worse it is. (Obvious exception: Apocalypse Now.) I say it’s animal yelling. Not Al Pacino-type shouting or the profane bluster in Glengarry Glen Ross or F. Lee Ermey barking at the “ladies” in Full Metal Jacket, but emphatic groaning, screaming or bellowing of any kind, for any effect. Live Wire, a Pierce Brosnan film that was on earlier today, reminded me of this fact.

The “WGA strike being settled by Pearl Harbor day” line, passed along a week and a half ago, evaporated last week. Two days ago Variety‘s Dave McNary wrote that “with both sides back at the barricades, many believe the writers strike won’t be resolved until March at the earliest.” Three more months? March? What happened to the mind games being over and serious horse-trading about to begin?

Deadline Hollywood Daily‘s Nikki Finke has just posted a letter sent to WGA membership from WGA board member Tom Schulman. The gist is Schulman quoting a conversation he had at a party few years ago with “a gentleman who until recently had been for decades the chief negotiator for the companies in another segment of the entertainment industry” who told Schulman about his negotiating strategy. Schulman write it down and here it is, more or less:

“Strategy for Hardball Negotiations:

“Piss off the leaders and spokespersons for the other side. A leader who loses his temper loses something in negotiations. Why? because anger clouds judgment, and because a person who loses his temper is embarrassed, usually comes and apologizes, and always gives something away to get back into the good graces of the other side.

“The end game is the money, but hardball negotiations aren’t about money, until the end. The real game is dividing and conquering.

“Lower the expectations of the other side — divide and conquer. Raise and lower the expectations of the other side — divide and conquer. Do everything possible to destroy the credibility of the other side’s leadership — divide and conquer. Use confidantes and back-channels to go over the heads of the stronger leaders to the softer targets — divide and conquer. When you figure out the other side’s bottom line, offer a fraction — it’s surprising how many times that stands.”

The first five minutes of The Golden Compass via QuickTime HD.

If I was better at persuading DVD publicists to send me freebies I might have seen some of the 24 films in the big fat Ford at Fox box set, which streets tomorrow. But I’m not (too much work) and I don’t have an extra $210 to blow, so thank fortune for the The Essential John Ford Collection (The Frontier Marshall, My Darling Clementine, Drums Along the Mohawk, How Green Was My Valley, The Grapes of Wrath and Nick Redman‘s 93-minute doc, Becoming John Ford), which is only $35.

Although it may be the least of the five, Drums Along the Mohawk (’39) is the one I’m most eager to see. This is because it was shot in three-strip Technicolor at the dawn of the color era, and I can’t get enough of the semi-surreal look of this process. The colors almost look painted on, which they were in a sense. The result is something strangely luminous and “fake”, and yet strangely agreeable. Obviously produced from a crude technology, but that’s the fun of it.

To me, Henry Fonda has always been the monochrome middle-aged architect in Twelve Angry Men, mild-mannered and balding, but here he is with unlined, light-peach skin and thick jet-black hair and a young man’s anxiety. I know, I know…but I eat this stuff up. It’s so much fun to watch I can overlook the blustery cornball acting styles that are a hallmark of almost all Ford films. (Fonda and costar Claudette Colbert aren’t guilty of this in Mohawk, but almost everyone else is.)

The difference this time, apparently, is that the new Mohawk has toned down the poster-paint colors so it looks, to judge by the stills on DVD Beaver, a little less forced.

The 13 Annie Award nominations gathered by Ratatouille have made it a favorite to take the Best Feature Animation Oscar. And the one nomination given to Beowulf (for production design) is obviously a fairly significant diss. Unquestionably, the animators who voted this way did so for small reasons. No film this year delivered quite like Beowulf. Its crime (and that seems an appropriate term now, given the Annie snub) was having used live actors as a mere starting point, in much the same way that portions of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs were built upon live acting. I only know that the result fit my idea of a wondrous fantasy through and through. If Beowulf isn’t animated, I’d like to know what term I’m supposed to use.

Judd Apatow‘s benevolent hand hasn’t exactly been bitten by Knocked Up costar Katherine Heigl, but it’s certainly been nipped. In an interview in January’s Vanity Fair, Heigl says “it was hard for me to love [Apatow’s] movie” because it’s “a little sexist…it paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as goofy, fun-loving guys.”

No one would argue that Knocked Up‘s attitude isn’t on the guy-skewing side, and yes, Heigl and female costar Leslie Mann, who plays Paul Rudd‘s unsatisfied wife, do come off as a little scolding. But every comedy needs “straight men” to bounce the humor off of, and that’s their function — to ask for a little maturity and sensitivity from men who are reluctant, to say the least, to provide this. At first, anyway.

This is an old gripe, but given Seth Rogen‘s slacker-stoner constitution the issue isn’t so much Heigl’s character being uptight and humorless as much as her credibility-straining decision, no matter how many shots of tequila she’s downed, to go horizontal with Rogen in the first place. There were 12 year-old kids watching Knocked Up in Kabul who found this incomprehensible.

As a result of Knocked Up‘s success, Heighl’s asking price reportedly went from $300,000 to $6 million, so I guess she can stomach her aesthetic disappointment.