The difference between the original R-rated version of The King’s Speech and the PG-13 version that The Weinstein Co. released after the 2011 Oscars was significant. The vulgarisms that Colin Firth‘s King George VI used during his therapy sessions with Geoffrey Rush‘s Lionel Logue were amusing and illustrative, and their absence diluted the film. But the f-bombs that will be bleeped out for a PG-13 version of Bully, as reported by the L.A. Times‘ Steven Zeitchik, added nothing vital to the R version in the first place. The f-bomb thing has been smoke all the way.

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That streaming performance of Orson Welles‘ 1939 screenplay of Hearts of Darkness that happened a few hours ago led to me to a PDF of the screenplay itself. Welles’ idea was that the audience would absorb everything through the POV of Marlow, the story’s traveller/narrator — the same idea that Robert Montgomery used in The Lady in the Lake. Here‘s a rundown of what happened. I’ve posted a few pages from the script:

“They buried something in the river…and then they nearly buried me…I nearly died of fever myself…I nearly said my own last words there on the river, and I found that probably I’d have nothing to...

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“”In true Toure style, the take-no-prisoners commentator went straight for the jugular and attacked Morgan face-to-face for not questioning Zimmerman about his comments regarding important moments of the night Trayvon Martin died. Of course, Morgan was having none of it and quickly became defensive, chiding Toure for MSNBC’s attempt to get Zimmeran Jr. on their network as well, and for the network’s running the interview in question all day without criticism.” — Daily Beast‘s Allison Samuels.

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I post this video every so often. It’s very calming. I love, love, love, love the way Chris Walken pronounces “chicken” and “pears.” Certain people says certain words perfectly, and I mean better than anyone else in the world. Walken saying “pears” (“peahrs“) is like Peter O’ Toole pronouncing “ecclesiastical.”

I visited Walken’s Upper West Side apartment twice in ’79. I had an excellent thing going with a lady named Sandra who was working for Walken and his wife as a kind of au pair or house-sitter. I remember the oriental rug on the living room floor, you bet, and the wood-burning...

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Many and perhaps most Americans who pay to see Tom Hooper‘s Les Miserables (Univeral, 12.14) will call it Lay Mizzruhbulls. This is how the girl with the mall accent will pronounce it when you call for showtimes on Moviefone. Gradually everyone will call it Lay Mizz, the default term for the B’way musical that ran from March 1987 through May 2003 (i.e., 6680 performances).

Russell Crowe as Inspector Javert during filming of Les Miserables.

The all-singing, all-dancing Les Miserables — “Layh Meezehrabluh” — began filming earlier this month with Hugh Jackman, Russell...

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Francis Coppola‘s “little fat girl from Ohio” quote has stuck for the last 21 years. Obit writers will, I suspect, include this along with Coppola’s great films — The Godfather movies, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now — and his winery and Zoetrope and everything else. Have any YouTube girls with the genius of Mozart sprung up since? I guess you could put Lena Dunham on this list.

I called Coppola cold at his Sherry Netherland suite one night in 1981. It was just before One From The Heart opened at the Radio City Music Hall in 1.33 to 1 — an event that 1.85 fascists are quietly seething about to this day. I taped the whole thing and ran the conversation as a q & a in two installments in

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I felt deadness in the world when I woke up this morning and went online. An absence of action, no pulse…couldn’t get off the ground. Nothing. And then this arrived. I don’t post stuff like this ever, but now I’m alive again. I’ve got my heart beating. The source is some guy called Sidewalk Freak or Social Vagrant or whatever.

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I’ve got a song stuck in my head again and I can’t kick it out. It’s been with me since last night when I was buying stuff at Pavillions. The only way to get rid of the constant replay in your head is to listen to the track over and over on your iPhone until you can’t stand it any more. And yet I love this track and Los Lobos in general. Fucking great guitar.

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The trailer for Alex Kurtzman‘s People Like Us (DreamWorks, 6.29) suggests a James L. Brooks-like relationship drama about romance, values, happenstance. But what sticks is the sound of Elizabeth Banks‘ nasally voice in the intro. In the mid ’40s Howard Hawks told the struggling Lauren Bacall to lower her voice — to make it sound smokier and huskier. She did that and the rest is history. Banks needs similar guidance. Or she needs to de-nasalize, at least.

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Tomorrow afternoon (Saturday, 3.31) in London, a reading of Orson Welles‘ script of Joseph Conrad‘s Heart of Darkness by actor Brian Cox (and presumably others) will be live-streamed starting at 5:30 pm. (9:30 am in Los Angeles, 12:30 pm in NYC.) The reading is being staged by artist Fiona Banner with the use of “a riverboat installation modelled on the Roi des Belges, the vessel Conrad captained on his journey up the Congo in 1890,” the Telegraph‘s Tim Robey reports.

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As anti-Obama hitjobs go, this one is fairly clever. Then again, what’s so heinous about stating an obvious fact? If and when Obama is re-elected next November he will have more flexibility. He’ll have more freedom to do and say whatever the hell he wants. What do righties think he meant when he said this to Dimitry Medvedev? “Don’t worry, bro…after I’m elected I’ll capitulate all over the place and you guys can do anything you want”?

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The newly revealed Man of Steel logo (which looks like something mounted on the wall of an executive conference room) emphasizes the somber, downish tonalities first revealed in that August 2011 shot of Henry Cavill in his blue-gray Superman suit with the rose-colored cape and the knife pleats. But what about the decision by Man of Steel director Zack Snyder and producer Chris Nolan to have Cavill run around with a hard-to-ignore wad in his pants — a bull-elephant package that would make any Chippendale’s dancer envious?

I don’t know how...

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In a 3.26 Esquire piece called “War Against Youth,” David Marche explains how the degree to which Boomers (and, to some extent, older GenXers) have stuck it to GenY is really without historical precdent. No generation has ever robbed and undermined another generation quite like this. In fact, when has an American generation ever made things worse for a younger one?

“Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, human potential has been consistently growing, generating greater material wealth, more education, wider opportunities — a vast and glorious liberation of human potential,” Marche begins. “In all that time, everyone, even followers of the most corrupt or most evil of ideologies, believed they were working for a better tomorrow...

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So Woody Allen‘s To Rome With Love will open theatrically in Italy 22 days from now. Which apparently means Allen’s film is a no-go for the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Update: To Rome With Love “is definitely not going to Cannes,” a friend confides. “It never was.”

Idea: I arrive in Cannes around noon on Tuesday, 5,15. If Allen’s film is still playing three weeks after opening (which it should be), maybe I could rent a car at Nice Airport and drive to San Remo, Italy — roughly 30 minutes east of Nice — and catch it at a local cinema. It would be nice if Sony Classics would consider showing To Rome With Love to Cannes-bound journalists in order to spare guys like me the cost of renting a car and all that. Maybe a screening in NY/LA concurrent with the Italian debut?

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In Contention‘s Kris Tapley and his wife April Smith, married last weekend, flew to Rome a couple of days ago for their honeymoon. They’re staying in a historic district apartment provided by Giuseppe Amorisi, a guy I know who sublets cool pads to me and certain friends. Yesterday afternoon I sent Giuseppe an email: “Did Kris and April arrive in Rome yet? Are they okay?” Giuseppe back to me: “Kris arrived and everything was fine for them. They are nice people. I’m sure they’ll enjoy Rome and the apartment.”

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When a lead character in a big-studio franchise has a longer hair style in the second film it’s because the actor happened to grow his hair and didn’t feel like making it short again, and because the director and the producers didn’t give a shit either about hair continuity. Hence Sam Worthington‘s “Danny McBride perm” in Wrath of the Titans.

Eff the audience if they don’t like my longer hair. I wore it short for Clash of the Titans because my Avatar character had short hair and it hadn’t grown out. Or because I was in a short-hair groove at the time. Or whatever. Deal with it.

Tom Cruise‘s Ethan Hunt has a Marine-style...

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You have to hand it to the designers and distributors of these one-sheets. They’ve made it clear which film is worthwhile, and which is the toss-away. The characters played by Robert Pattinson in Bel Ami and Cosmopolis are not dissimilar. Alone, aloof, not overly concerned with ethical behavior, etc.

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Tarsem Singh‘s Mirror Mirror (Relativity, 4.4) is a visually appealing but low-energy comic farce that never leaves the ground. I didn’t laugh once. I didn’t guffaw. I didn’t titter. The pacing is too relaxed or something. It plays a bit like the medieval chapter in Woody Allen‘s Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know About Sex…and that wasn’t funny either. I didn’t hate it exactly, and I was charmed by Armie Hammer‘s performance as the hunky prince, but I was checking my watch every 15 minutes or so.

The best part, as I noted last night, is a Bollywood-style song-and-dance sequence during the closing credits.

The main story points in the classic Snow White tale are kept, but with lots of satirical tweaking. (The script is by Melissa Wallack and...

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Everything about this trailer for Take This Waltz (Magnolia, 6.29) persuades that Sarah Polley‘s film is a stand-out — a perceptive, intelligent romantic drama for youngish adults. The narration is especially fine. I caught this in Toronto last September. I was okay with it. I respected it. Why didn’t I really like it? Because a couple of aspects didn’t feel quite right.

The basic shot is that Michelle Williams, married to a highly subdued (i.e., muffled) Seth Rogen, falls in love with a cute guy who lives across the street (Luke Kirby). It’s obvious that Williams is bored with Rogen from the start, and that she could do better. But the main fact is that we’re a little bored...

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Non-adventurous, cautious-minded ComicCon journos were fretting today about missing today’s noon deadline for the ComicCon hotels form. “Convinced it’s too late, will sleep on the street,” one said. It’s always preferable to plan ahead and feel secure, of course, but people with gumption can always improvise and make do.

The last time I attended ComicCon I just drove around and found the most attractive (or at least tolerable) down-at-the-heels flophouses in the northern regions. Pacific Beach, Ocean Beach…that line of country. Fleabag motels are always cheaper and almost never filled to capacity. Because the vast majority of cautious-minded travelers refuse to stay in them.

The only way I’ll ever attend ComicCon again is if a major, must-see film has its first-ever showing there. Otherwise forget it. ComicCon is Ground Zero for the CGI jizz, comic-book jail...

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The U.S. review embargo on Tarsem Singh‘s Mirror Mirror ends tomorrow at 3 pm, but overseas critics are going mostly thumbs-up. I can at least say that the closing musical number, a Bollywood synth-pop tune that comes out of nowhere, is the most agreeable thing about it. It’s a bit loony that a film based on a classic European fairytale would reach out to Indian pop for a finale, but obviously not so loony given Singh’s heritage.

If I’m not mistaken, the credits identify the director as Tarsem, Tarsem Singh and Tarsem Singh Dhandwar.

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Eight days after my 3.20 Hunger Games review and six days after posting an insincere mea culpa, and after getting slapped around by bloggers and tweeters for saying that Jennifer Lawrence “seems too big” for costar Josh Hutcherson, and that “she’s a fairly tall, big-boned lady,” L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein has stepped into the fray.

Maybe if I try clarifying things again the

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Yesterday I watched Warner Home Video’s brand-new 70th annniversary Bluray of Casablanca. It’s grainier than the 2008 Bluray, all right, and a bit darker. I quickly wrote two prominent grain-lovers, Robert Harris and Glenn Kenny, with my views, and they wrote me back and I replied and blah-dee-blah.

“It’s darker than the ’08 version and...

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Like most people, I never cared very much about fine art except for the occasional stroll through MOMA or the Whitney or the Guggenheim or LACMA, or some random visit to a gallery in West Hollywood or Tribeca. And so I never read the late Hilton Kramer‘s art criticism, which appeared in the N.Y. Times from ’65 to ’82, and also in Arts Magazine, the N.Y. Observer, New Criterion, The Nation, etc. Not my world, didn’t give a hoot…sorry.

Art critic Hilton Kramer (1928 — 2012)

I’m such a fine-art peon, in fact, that when I read yesterday about Kramer’s death my...

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I was actually bullied by certain “friends” of mine in high school. Not constantly but now and then. I felt engaged by school studies from time to time (I liked history and English) but mostly I was bored to tears, and I hated the repressive “no” atmosphere in my home, which was partly due to my rebellious nature but was largely a product of my alcoholic dad’s personality. So I acted out in order to break out. I was impish, snarky, theatrical, intimidated, angry. I wanted attention.

And so a few obstinate assholes took it upon themselves to let me know that my attitude and manner were socially out of line. I don’t want to talk about it. It was a venal culture. I wasn’t the only one to go through the gauntlet. Every now and...

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Warner Home Video’s A Streetcar Named Desire Bluray (streeting on 4.10) is close to perfect. It’s never looked better. Some portions are between okay and nice, and others have that shimmering silvery dreamcicle vibe that can make you fall in love with a black-and-white film all over again.

The older I get, the sadder this film feels.

In a way, Blanche’s speech about “hanging back with the brutes” is a condensation of much of what I’ve written in this column about CG ComicCon cowflop and general all-around Hollywood action crap.

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