I heard Black Swan at tonight’s Zeigeld premiere screening like never before. The big-screen speakers blasted and trumpeted Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, lifting me up and over and out…fuhgedaboutit. It was my third viewing of Black Swan, and I was blown away yet again…over the falls. This film is a masterwork, a symphony, and 97% of the ticket-buying audience will never appreciate how great it can sound and feel because they’ll be seeing it at some shitty-ass megaplex with the sound turned down so the theatre owner can save on maintenance.

Black Swan star and dead-certain Best Actress nominee Natalie Portman, director Darren Aronofsky at post-premiere after-party at Manhattan’s St. Regis Hotel — Tuesday, 11.30, 10:40 pm.

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Scott Feinberg has just posted a 45-minute interview “with one of the more colorful characters in this year’s awards race, Social Network costar and Best Supporting Actor contender Justin Timberlake. It’s one of his first, if not his first, long-form interview this awards season, and I learned a lot from it about Justin and his performance.”

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They do a piece about falling down and they don’t include Vivien Leigh‘s radish scene in Gone With The Wind? The look on that boxer’s face when he gets up doesn’t exactly say “I’m ready to fight again!” It says, “Whoa, I gotta fight that guy again?…shit.” I’m glad for General Motors employees who still have jobs and are feeding their families, but I see that GM logo and something goes cold inside. Top-dog GM executives can rot in hell, no offense.

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It’s been one of those frenetic mornings. A lot of calling about something I’ve decided not to run for the time being. Tapping out some rough reactions to True Grit. Some back and forth about the Sundance ’11 condo. And preparing for the two big events of the day — a Kids Are All Right schmooze thing in Chelsea, and then the big Black Swan premiere and after-party tonight. The long and the short is that I have to do a time-out for two or three hours.

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Michael Mann has so far made one serious failure, and that was (and is) The Keep. I saw it once 27 years ago, and that was sufficient. And yet some, I realize, feel it’s a little better than that. Not that anyone’s had much of a chance to give it another viewing. The Keep isn’t available on DVD or Bluray, but it’s now available through Netflix Streaming.

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Congrats to Winter’s Bone director Debra Granik and distributor Roadside Attractions for nabbing two Gotham Awards last night. The grimly realistic Ozarkian drama that launched Jennifer Lawrence took the Best Feature and Best Ensemble Performance trophies. And cheers to the three big honorary award recipients — Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky (looking very dapper with his Preston Sturges moustache), Get Low star Robert Duvall and Conviction star Hilary Swank.

Taken from balcony behind the stage as honorary award-winner Robert Duvall was delivering remarks. Notice Black Swan star Natalie Portman (excellent evening dress!) and her director Darren Aronofsky sitting ringside. I...

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Irvin Kershner “seemed amused when I told him that, when I first saw Loving back when I was in college, I really didn’t care much for it because I couldn’t relate to its melancholy story about a guy who was beginning to worry that he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere in his career – and, worse, in his life – and worried whether it was already too late to turn back,” Moving Picture Blog‘s Joe Leydon wrote yesterday.

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Am I allowed to say…? Naah, forget it. I was going to say while I found Leslie Neilsen‘s original Airplane performance amusing, I never laughed. At most I chuckled. Chortled? Neilsen obviously hasd that deadpan-manner thing down pat. Tens of millions (including Keith Olbermann) loved him for that. It made him into a comic legend in the realm of…well, his own. But let’s not go overboard.

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A Peggy Siegal luncheon was held today at the Four Seasons for The Fighter, and particularly for director David O. Russell, star-producer Mark Wahlberg and costar Melissa Leo. After the food and schmooze Russell and I spoke for a half-hour — here‘s the mp3. Russell is my kind of whip-smart guy — highly perceptive, well-read, an adult, a father, and whimsical but in no way combustible or hair-trigger. His shorter hair, I think, signifies a new resolve never to be on YouTube ever again.

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If it turns out to be true, James Franco‘s Oscar co-hosting gig will probably kill his shot at being a Best Actor nominee for his performance in 127 Hours. Just as Tom Hanks once said “there’s no crying in baseball!,” you can also say “the Oscar telecast host can’t win the Best Actor Oscar! You can’t straddle lanes like that…no! If he’s the co-host, fine. And he’s a Best Actor nominee, fine. But you can’t do both.”

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Nikki Finke is reporting that she “just learned that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has asked James Franco and Anne Hathaway to host the Academy Awards, and it ‘looks like’ both young stars have accepted the offer.

“There is always the chance that one or both of them might back out because of prior commitments and other concerns,” Finke adds, “But my sources say the host announcement could be made as soon as this week.”

Excuse me and due respect, but this is close to ridiculous. These guys would be great for hosting the MTV Awards, maybe, but they’re not skilled or funny or pizazzy enough to handle the Oscars. What are the...

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TheWrap‘s Steve Pond has passed along positive tweet impressions of Joel and Ethan Coen‘s True Grit, which screened to a select few last week in Los Angeles and also Saturday night here in New York.

I was told two things yesterday about True Grit. One, that it’s a surprisingly emotional film (i.e., surprisingly for the Coen brothers, that is). And two, that while Jeff Bridges‘s Rooster Cogburn performance is crackling and robust, Matt Damon “almost steals the show”in the Glenn Campbell role, and that he’s suddenly looking like a possible Best Supporting Actor nominee.

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The great Irvin Kershner, director of The Empire Strikes Back but more importantly of Loving, the 1970 George Segal-Eva Marie Saint Westport ennui dramedy, had died at age 87.

Kersh was a feisty guy, fun to talk to, full of piss and vinegar, no day at the beach. I loved his brief little performance in The Last Temptation of Christ...

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The Fighter had another triumphant Manhattan showing last night, and at a good theatre for a change — i.e., Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade as opposed to the always-crappy-sounding Lincoln Square. After the lights came up star-producer Mark Wahlberg, director David O. Russell and Best Supporting Actress contender Melissa Leo sat for a q & a. Strong applause greeted the closing credits. New Yorker critic David Denby was there. Smart crowd, pretty middle-aged women, etc. It was the place to be.

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Yesterday’s Oscar Poker was just Sasha, Phil Contrino and myself. We got into early True Grit talk, the award-worthiness of Shutter Island, general box-office tallies, Black Swan, spoilers, the diminishing theatre presence in the heartland, and the current leading candidates for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress. Here’s an independent, non-iTunes link.

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The Pursuitist is reporting that Naked Gun guy Leslie Nielsen, 84, has died in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The website was reportedly notified of Nielsen’s passing by his nephew, Doug Nielsen of Richmond, Virginia. Nielsen passed due to “complications from pneumonia.” Nielsen’s comic signature was a classic deadpan response to whatever foolery was put before him.

Neilsen’s comic breakthrough was in...

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Richard Levine‘s Every Day (Image, January 2011) flew under my radar when it played at last spring’s Tribeca Film Festival. I heard nothing. IFC.com’s Stephen Saito marginally approved with reservations. I’m only paying attention now because the trailer has popped up. I’m telling myself that any adult-flavored drama that isn’t based on a comic book has to be, on some level, a good thing. But I’m not sensing anything new here.

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In an 8.21.10 riff about Criterion’s America Lost and Found: The BBS Story, I said that “the only keepers” are Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show. But these three look and sound terrific on Bluray, like pristine celluloid prints straight out of the lab, and are fully worth the price. Prime shelf space, to have and to hold.

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Earlier today Awards Daily‘s Ryan Adams posted two new King’s Speech posters — an English-language version (possibly the new Weinstein-approved one-sheet) and a Spanish-language poster. Both are superior to that really crappy one that a few columnists ripped to shreds earlier this month. The Spanish poster, I feel, is easily the most attractive of the three. But it has, of course, a glaring sideburn problem.

I presume I...

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It supposedly dates you if you admit to playing stickball as a kid. I don’t know why. It just means that when you were nine or ten or eleven you pitched some kind of rubber ball at a batter who stood in front of a concrete wall that had a batter’s box drawn in chalk, and sometimes with another guy (i.e., the pitcher’s teammate) fielding occasional flyballs and grounders. I’m bringing this up because I’m wondering if anyone else ever had a dispute over what my friends and I used to call the “splatter effect.”

When the batter didn’t swing there were always disputes about whether the pitcher had thrown a strike. I hit upon an idea one day that involved dipping the worn-down, next-to-no-fuzz tennis ball that we used into a nearby puddle, or just pouring water over it. The ball would then make a mark when it hit the wall, making it indisputable whether or not a strike had been thrown.

Nonetheless, disputes...

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Initial reactions to Joel and Ethan Coen‘s True Grit will be posted here and there on Wednesday, 12.1, around 1 pm. I can’t say exactly when or where, but the Scott Rudin-produced western is starting to be shown. I’m told there was a restricted screening (i.e., no Poland, Tapley or Hammond) that happened last Tuesday. (Gasp!) Attendees were sworn to secrecy, etc.

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This is an old refrain, but everyone needs to start treating the Oscar telecast as merely the end of the road — a moderately exciting, amusing, occasionally touching, usually harmless, sometimes irksome, sometimes gratifying ceremony in which certain heavy-predicted favorites have their night in the sun. And that’s all it is — just a televised finale. We all know it’s not the destination that counts as much as the quality of the journey, so act accordingly.

So people need to invest a bit more in the season as a whole, and at the risk of alienating Oscar advertisers, start talking more about week-to-week personal passions and what the critics groups and the bloggers and the ubers and early adopters are saying, and endeavor as much as possible to (and I mean no harm or disrespect) ignore the deadwood and just stop talking about...

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Marriages between filmmakers are tinderboxes. They’re never long for this world, especially if the husband is a director-screenwriter-producer and the wife is an actress, and double especially when they make films together. Jointly-created films are like children, and if the film fails to ignite commercially and/or boost the career of the wife, the parents will start to blame themselves. Most talented actresses are intensely ambitious and no day at the beach to begin with, and this will only intensify if you put them in a movie that doesn’t take off or make them seem as mesmerizing or pistol-hot or Meryl Streep-ish as they feel is their due. It becomes even worse, obviously, if the husband has an issue or two of his own, which is not unusual among director-writer-producers. On top of which infidelity is so easy on that level.

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For years I’ve been lamenting the “CinemaScope mumps” distortion syndrome — that face-broadening, weight-adding effect that resulted from the use of anamorphic CinemaScope lenses from ’53 through ’59 or ’60. It would be heaven if someone could figure a way to horizontally compress these films so that it would all look right. There’s a fundamental feeling of being cheated out of the correct proportions that were captured but not represented by those

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Everyone was tweeting last night about the Munk debate in Toronto between Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens over the contribution of religion to the world’s ills and/or comforts. I myself was driving back from Gulalala to San Francisco, and am now searching around for an online digital replay. Before the debate Hitchens sat down with Toronto Globe & Mail‘s editorial board editor John Geiger for a general discussion about same. Here is segment #1, segment #2 and segment #3.

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First a persuasive dismissive review from the New Yorker‘s Anthony Lane, and now a follow-up from N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis. Tell me how this doesn’t translate into some level of difficulty for The King’s Speech. And, unlike Lane, Dargis doesn’t even tumble for Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush‘s performances — she likes Guy Pearce‘s King Edward VIII instead.

“Like many entertainments of this pop-historical type, The King’s Speech wears history lightly no matter how heavy the crown,” she

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“Great meals fade upon reflection — everything else gains,” a great hustler of the past once said. But has Inception gained? I know it upticked between viewing #1 (which frustrated due to shitty sound at a non-IMAX showing at Manhattan’s Lincoln Square) and viewing #2 (a very high-quality IMAX screening at San Francisco’s Metreon with knockout sound). But since then Inception has kind of settled down and levelled out. It’s one of the most thrilling mind-fuck movies of all time, but I’m just not that into seeing it again on Bluray. Go figure.

Okay, I’m half into watching

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TheWrap‘s Steve Pond has not only written one of the most depressing Oscar-season columns I’ve read over the past several weeks, but one of the most infuriating. The simple acknowledging of idiot-wind opinions held by those legendary “older conservative Academy members” gives them a kind of legitimacy, and that they don’t deserve this. Oh, and only 200 people showing up to see 127 Hours is merely another example of arm-carve anxiety. Everyone knows it’s out there. I brought my 127 Hours screener to my Thanksgiving sleep-over house in Gualala, and nobody even asked about it, much less popped it into the DVD player.

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This morning I was admiring the catchy eyesore appeal of Bones Roadhouse in downtown Gualala. The flames in the sign tell you they’re into charbroiled beef — very distinctive, guys. Not mention the “great ocean views.” And the loud brownish rust color of the exterior accented by those Indian red window frames is startling. This is the downside of American free enterprise — i.e., people with atrocious taste being allowed to not only design their own storefronts but pollute the...

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A friend asked why I’ve been ranting about the failure of Collider‘s Steve Weintraub to step up to the plate and post whatever favorable opinions he may have about William Monahan‘s London Boulevard, which has opened in London and gotten creamed by most critics. Weintraub has stated he hasn’t posted a...

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