The first thought when I saw this one-sheet this afternoon was how much better it is -- more crackling, intriguing -- than Arthur Penn's 1965 film. I would give this poster at least an 8 or an 8.5, and the film a 5...okay, maybe a 6. What other one-sheets seemed to deliver more than the films they were selling? Nearly all of the Saul Bass one-sheets for those 1950s Otto Preminger films, surely. The Man With The Golden Arm one-sheet is several artistic realms above the movie. Others? There must be dozens.

I have to leave for Hoboken and an outdoor screening of On The Waterfront by the Alamo Drafthouse's Flying-Fuck-at-a Rolling-Donut Travelling Picture Show...or whatever it's called. It's happening on Pier A right off Frank Sinatra Drive at 8 pm, and I've also been invited for drinks at a bar beforehand so I'd better shag ass.

Joe Baltake says he's "weary of the 'strong strain of misogyny' (Kim Morgan's apt expression, from her Sunset Gun site) that seems to routinely follow Jennifer Aniston in film review after film review (written mostly by snarky young critics). I find Aniston to be a reliable actress, a terrific comedienne, a most companionable screen presence and, by all accounts, a very generous co-worker. It's gotten out of hand. So, fed up, I posted something."

I'll tell you what's wrong with Aniston. She specializes in making mediocre movies. She's really not that great an actress. She doesn't tremble with soul. And...Read More

I saw this New York magazine cover last night in a news store on Third and 69th, and decided then and there this is undoubtedly one of the coolest things Katie Holmes has done in any realm or arena. And it's meaningless -- the wearing of clothes, simulating a famous photo, and so what? Nothing at all. But it's close to perfect.

Another thought is how free-spirited and alive to mood and possibility and aroma Mrs. Onassis seemed this particular day. She's obviously gone now but the idea of being gone couldn't have been...Read More

I was just told that the director of a film I've recently seen and greatly admire currently lives in Rochester, New York. The second I heard this his stock immediately dropped. If you're a serious director you can't live in Rochester. I've been there and it's absolute Nothingville -- sprawling, architecturally bland if not ugly, economically depressed, living in the past (when Eastman Kodak was a booming company), overrun by corporate chain stores, schlubby fat people shuffling around, older cars everywhere, gun stores, yahoos with sideburns, etc.

The world is full of wonder and intrigue and immense beauty, and I can't...Read More

In an 8.18 interview with Christiane Kubrick, the 78 year-old widow of Stanley Kubrick, Guardian contributor Jon Ronson reveals what seems to me like an exceptionally sad fact. Vivian Kubrick, 50, who played "Squirt" in 2001: A Space Odyssey and who shot that Making of 'The Shining' doc, succumbed to Scientology about a decade ago, and now her mother considers her "lost."

Vivian Kubrick about 10 years ago, and during her bush-baby scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

"She was hugely loved, and now I've lost her," Christiane says. "You know that? I...Read More

My understanding is that Christian Alvart's Case 39 was shot in '06. This is indicated by the fact that Bradley Cooper, whom I've totally written off since The A-Team and his sickening appearance on the last MTV Movie Awards, has his chubbier face -- i.e., the one he had in The Wedding Crashers, before he buffed up in order to look like a smokin' hot movie star.

One might think that the combination of (a) the three-year delay and (b) Renee Zellwegger's presence would be...Read More

In an hours-old Facebook posting, Daniel Plainview (a.k.a., Matthew Wilder) has criticized documentarian Thom Andersen as an "inexplicably revered megasnob." He also raps him for having said that Point Blank "was liked only by people who hate L.A." Wilder is alluding to a quote from Andersen's L.A. Plays Itself, but that's not the exact phrasing. The line is "people who hate L.A. love Point Blank."

The growing number of right-wing ignoramuses who believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim (and therefore, by implication, more in sympathy with the aims of Middle Eastern wackjobbers than those of the U.S.) is beneath comment. And yet while Obama's support of the Ground Zero mosque is noble, the issue itself is arguably muddled.

To build a mosque directly adjacent to the site of the greatest slaughter of noncombatant U.S. citizens in this country's history, a slaughter perpetrated by young Muslim loons who shouted "Allahu Akbar!" right before the planes hit, would obviously be an act of spiritual generosity. Magnanimous, Christian,...Read More

David Fincher's The Social Network "is splendid entertainment from a master storyteller, packed with energetic incident and surprising performances," writes former L.A. Weekly critic and NYFF associate director Scott Foundas. "It is a movie of people typing in front of computer screens and talking in rooms that is as suspenseful as any more obvious thriller.

Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network

"But this is also social commentary so perceptive that it may be regarded by future generations the way we now look to Gatsby for its acute distillation of Jazz Age decadence.

BEST FILMS SO FAR: Chris Nolan's Inception, Lee Unkrich's Toy Story 3, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Biutiful (Cannes), Jean-François Richet's Mesrine: Killer Instinct; Doug Liman's Fair Game (Cannes), Olivier Assayas' Carlos (Cannes), Aaron Schneider's Get Low, Noah Baumbach's Greenberg, Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer, Philipp Stolzl's North Face.

BEST DOCS SO FAR: Charles Ferguson's Inside Job (Cannes); Amir Bar Lev's The Tillman Story; Alex Gibney's Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer; Kate Davis and David Heilbroner's Stonewall Uprising; Vikram Jayanti's The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector; Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington's Restrepo; Don Argott's Art of the Steal.

BEST PICTURE

HIGH INTRIGUE / ELITE POPCORN

PLUS: Buried; Blue Valentine; Please Give; Triage. (4)

PLUS: The Town (d: Ben Affleck) -- Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Chris Cooper; 3 Backyards (d: Eric Mendelsohn) -- Embeth Davidtz, Edie Falco, Elias Koteas; The Debt (d: John Madden) -- Sam Worthington, Helen Mirren, Ciaran Hinds, Tom Wilkinson, Martin Csokas; Burlesque (d: Steve Antin) -- Cher, Christina Aguilera, Stanley Tucci, Kristen Bell, Alan Cumming. (4)

Anton Corbijn's The American (Focus Features, 9.1) will screen for press two days before it opens on Wednesday, September 1st. My sense is that Corbijn has made an exquisite-looking, almost arty-type film, but it may not be juicy enough for Joe Popcorn. My only other comment is that George Clooney's hair is too short in this thing. It looks a little Third Reich-y, too intense, something.

I've been feeling frustrated for a while now about the release-date delay of Rod Lurie's Straw Dogs. The initial plan was to open it in spring 2011, but last March it was bumped to September 2011, which seemed to me like a candy-ass move. Distributors always delay when they've scared. They tend to put off releasing so-called intimidating films on their slate the same way financially-troubled folk will sometimes put off paying the mortgage.

Straw Dogs is a smart but violent film with a rape scene, sure, but why bite into a sandwich if you don't...Read More

I have a 4pm midtown screening of an allegedly rousing and well-acted horse-racing flick, and then I'll retire to some Starbucks and resume the daily grind.

In the current New Yorker, Tad Friend writes "about the strange disappearance of the downtown artist John Lurie, known in the '80s for his band the Lounge Lizards, in the '90s for his show Fishing with John, and more recently for his absurdist paintings.

"'I remember he was very handsome,' recalls Sylvia Plachy, who photographed Lurie in 1984, during his Lounge Lizard days, at his apartment on the Lower East Side. 'He looked like James Dean and Marlon Brando, and a little like Adrien Brody!"

"Twenty-six years later photographer Gillian Laub spent a...Read More

I'm told by a reliable source that "no decision" has been made about when to release Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life. I had gotten in touch after Todd McCarthy's stunning prediction yesterday that Malick's long-delayed film probably wont be out this year and may not be seen until next May's Cannes Film Festival. McCarthy is "speculating," the source said.

Sure, of course. McCarthy said as much yesterday. And yet I've known McCarthy for many years and he's no shoot-from-the-hipper. He's a very careful and prudent fellow, and I can't imagine he'd write something like this unless...Read More

I've read the 200-plus comments about LexG, and while he's obviously a mixed package it would be unwise of me to ask him to to push on. There can be no disputing that like most artists, he's an excessive personality in some ways. I've told him privately that I don't want to read one more post about his feelings of depression or whatever aroused hormonal reactions may be pumping through his system in response to this or that young actress, or the allure of her damn feet and her $75 pedicure.

And LexG does need to man up and publicly write...Read More

"I've never had a problem with your neutral links to showbiz stories, but so many people do have a problem with you, to go by last night's 'Quandary' post. I don't want to lose people, and apparently your links and your comments, for that matter, are infuriating a good number of them. Maybe it was the Avatar box-office thread that broke the camel's back -- I don't know.

"So I'm sorry but while I have no argument with your posting links to current stories because it's sometimes hard for me to write and keep up 24/7, you're going to have to...Read More

In an 8.18 Indiewire dispatch, columnist Todd McCarthy, who's serving on the New York Film Festival selection committee, writes that "it now seems clear" that Terrence Malick's endlessly delayed The Tree of Life "will not be opening this year. I can't prove it, of course, and he's supposedly set to start shooting a new film in Oklahoma in October, but I'm convinced we won't be seeing The Tree of Life until, at the earliest, the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. Or perhaps it could turn up at the New York Film Festival a year from now." What?

What's wrong with this trailer? It agitates. It's strident. It gives me a slight headache. Odd sounds and curious music keeps popping in and out. And the narrator is awful. It doesn't seem to represent the film I saw in Cannes. Somebody has to fix this, and fast.

People I respect and admire are telling me that LexG is over-ranting and dominating each thread he takes part in, and that they're getting tired of it and thinking about bailing on HE because of this. Is this a fringe feeling that I've giving too much thought to, or should I be concerned? I want the best and brightest people to hang here. I don't want HE to become some downmarket forum for primitive expressions, and...well, my head is spinning. I really don't know what to say or do.

LexG is exceptionally bright and knows about writing straight from the soul without...Read More

That's what Jeff Bridges looks like with a beard and a cowboy hat, you bet. His beard is a little whiter than it was in Crazy Heart, and it wasn't white at all, of course, in The Big Lebowski so time moves on, etc. What this pic tells me primarily is that Bridges isn't going to register all that strongly as Rooster Cogburn. He has only so many tricks up his sleeve, after all. He can only repeat well-worn schtick. But Hailee Steinfeld, you can tell, has some kind of snarly polecat, don't-mess-with-me attitude.

Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld...

I used to have this thing going when I was, like, "oooh, I'm Anna Paquin, the choosy and very cool indie actress"? The Piano, Jane Eyre, Hurlyburly, Buffalo Soldiers, 25th Hour...right? And then...I don't know what happened. But I love being naked and bloody and my own person and part of a hot HBO show that idiots think is really sexy and cool. And I'm being really well paid so...you know, what am I doing wrong? Wait -- am I doing something wrong?

If I could slaughter each and every vampire movie and cable TV series with single...Read More

The trailer for John Curran's Stone (Overture, 10.8) makes it seem like a more-or-less conventional crime melodrama. In the midst of evaluating an apparently psychopathic convict (Edward Norton) regarding an upcoming parole hearing, a retirement-age prison counselor (Robert De Niro) succumbs to sexual favors offered by the prisoner's scheming wife (Milla Jovovich). We all know where this is likely to go. Exposure, revenge, moral ruin, chaos.

Guess what? It goes somewhere else entirely. And I mean into a realm that, for me, is not far from the...Read More

I need to once more register outrage at the rape of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho on the just-out British Bluray (and the forthcoming U.S. version). Because no one, it seems, is mentioning or agreeing with what I said two months ago, which was that two aspect-ratio versions should have been included in the Bluray package.

It should offer the top-and-bottom-cropped 1.78:1 version and the 1.37:1 version that everyone, his sister and his brother-in-law saw in many theatres in 1960, and then on broadcast TV, VHS and laser disc for decades hence. Because the latter is...Read More

Two newscasters playing themselves and no characters, no dialogue, no hint of any kind of a story? Just a basic situational set-up with repetitive CG effects? Forget it.

I just saw this ten minutes ago. A gradual sinking, a metaphor...something. Pretty damn intense. Those red eyes and skin rashes. Fierce and paranoid imaginings. Beautiful dancing. Portman is really losing it. In a riveting way, I mean.

How good can a Bluray of The Bridge on the River Kwai look? At best the color will appear a bit more saturated with slightly more sharpness than the DVD. Hunky-dory. But nobody's going to have an orgasm or fall on the floor when they see it. The 1957 film was shot on 35mm and almost entirely outdoors, and has a utilitarian look for the most part. Some of it just looks good; other parts look fair.

Jack Hildyard's widescreen cinematography is handsome for the most part -- the early-morning-light shots are quite beautiful --- but...Read More

Gothamist staffer John Del Signore has blown the lid off the bedbug situation at Manhattan's AMC Empire. A woman who was "covered with bites" after recently seeing a film at the 42nd Street plex tells Del Signore that AMC Empire staffers" have confirmed that the theater has known of the infestation for days and that it will not be fumigated until Tuesday (i.e., today).

Staffers told the woman "that the AMC on 125th is fighting a bedbug infestation as well."

Bedbugs, Del Signore notes, "thrive in the dark, and have previously feasted on moviegoers in...Read More

"With all of this talk about film restorations and recuts, I want to mention the restoration of Michael Powell's The Red Shoes on Blu-Ray," says HE reader James Kent. "I'd only seen this film once before (a couple of years back on an HD cable station) and was struck by the legendary visuals and cinematography by Jack Cardiff. I knew the Criterion Bluray had to be special, but holy crap -- it's by far the most amazing pure-visual film I have ever seen. There isn't a mark on this thing. It's as if you're in a screening room in 1948, and...Read More

Todd Solondz is suddenly looking at some tough child-molester-movie competition from David Schwimmer. Especially with Schwimmer using first-rate actors -- Clive Owen, Catherine Keener, Viola Davis, Jason Carke. Trust is playing the 2010 Toronto Film Festival, and if it's well made, terrific. But the trailer makes it seem like an emotional-bait movie for saps, and something in me just rebels at this kind of thing.

The message titles on the trailer confirm it is exploitation of the lowest order, playing on the fears of people who...Read More

A perfect moment happened three or four days ago inside Toad Hall, the neighborhood bar on Grand Street near West Broadway. I was buying my second beer (a draft of something golden and fairly icy) and all of a sudden this started playing. I knew the opening drum-and-raunchy guitar thing, but I'd forgotten the name of the song. The bartender reminded me. I returned to my table with the big brew and immediately bought the song on iTunes. It was on my phone two minutes later.

Sometimes when you hear the right older song in...Read More

During an Avatar: Special Edition interview last week James Cameron told a Coming Soon guy that he's "just done a complete remaster of Aliens (the Bluray of which will be included in the Alien Anthology set, due on 10.26), and that he did the work with the same colorist with whom he had worked on Avatar, and that he's "completely removed all noise and grain from the extended version of the film." Yes!

"It's spectacular," Cameron said. "We went...Read More

Today's news that Clint Eastwood's Hereafter, Danny Boyle's 127 Hours, Dustin Lance Black 's What's Wrong With Virginia?, Casey Affleck's I'm Still There and Missy Tadjedin's Last Night will show at the Toronto Film Festival (which starts in a mere three weeks) is very good news.

Now I feel as if things are finally kicking in. Not that I wasn't intrigued with the previously announced titles (including Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, which I have above-average interest in and hopes for), but the Boyle and the Eastwood have upped the voltage. My only problem is with the curious absence of William Monaghan's London...Read More

This is that clip from Blake Edwards' Experiment in Terror that I mentioned a few months ago, one that includes shots of a group of teenagers hanging out at a community pool. I saw this 1962 film for the first time in decades about a year ago, and when the poolside scene began I said to myself, "Something's different about the kids apart from the haircuts and dialogue, but I don't know what."

And then it hit me. They're all thin and in great shape....Read More

A couple of years ago I plugged Don't Forget To Validate Your Parking, Mike Le's sharp and well-written webcomic. Yesterday Le released the first motion-animated sequence based on his work thus far. Excellent stuff. To borrow from Bukowski, the stink of Los Angeles has sunk into his bones.