Movie Nation

How’s this for timing? The Senate Intelligence Committee, which had injected itself into the Oscar race by deposing Kathryn Bigelow, screenwriter Mark Boal and others involved in the film in order to find out the source of their Killing Bin Laden info, decided that the film not winning the Oscar was all they had in mind to start with.

Which is what the filmmakers have been saying all along, a cheap publicity ploy with right wing implications.

Can’t have a film trumpeting an Obama accomplishment getting extra attention, or so the GOP lawmakers who harped on this seemed to believe.

They’ve shut down the investigation, wasting less time and money in the near future. Apparently.

I guess they’re counting on most Americans not remembering that “Argo” was a minor triumph of the (Democratic) Jimmy Carter administration.

No. He didn’t win another Oscar for “Lincoln.” But let’s hope he’s not irked about that.

The title of his new film, “Emperor,” has multiple meanings. Jones plays General Douglas MacArthur, who led Allied forces to victory in the Pacific and ruled Japan as the man in charge of reforming the occupied country, turning it into a pacifist, capitalist bulwark against communism. He was practically an emperor of the country, one placed on the throne by the USA.

But in the earliest days of the occupation, he had to make a decision — whether or not to prosecute the Japanese Emperor Hirohito for either urging on the militarists or turning a blind eye to the aggression and war crimes of the Japanese state.

Matthew Fox plays the trusted aid charged with giving MacArthur justification, one way or another, for his actions.

Questions for Tommy Lee? I’ll need a lot of them, as he’s a tough interview.

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Movie shoot-outs are often dazzling feats of marksmanship. Few filmmakers have the guts to show their version of “Gunfight at the OK Corral” the way such gunfights actually go down — dozens of rounds, most  missing the mark — pistols popping off, incessantly, their owners unable to hit the broad side of a crook in the heat of battle.

That’s one thing the two-fisted British crime drama “The Sweeney” gets absolutely right. In a running gun battle, the pistol packing coppers are at a distinct disadvantage to “villains” toting semi-automatic weapons. And neither has much luck at hitting ducking, moving non-civilian targets who are shooting back.

“The Sweeney,” based on an influential British TV show of the ‘70s, is a down-and-dirty genre picture that manages a couple of decent plot twists, a couple of passable car chases and two epic shoot-outs. The Brits may be decades behind the French in the car chase game, but director Nick Love has studied his Michael Mann (“Heat”) and learned how hard-boiled men and women of violence look, think, fight and shoot.

“The Sweeney” are cops, men and women who live for the adrenalin rush of the chase and the tussle, the satisfaction of the arrest,

“We’re The Sweeney. You’re nicked.”

They’re working class and coarse –a flying squad of violent crime detectives who still go by their unit’s bloody Cockney nickname, “The Sweeney,” slang for Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

The charismatic Ray Winstone is their leader, Jack Regan, an “any means necessary” brute with more than a hint of corruption about him. Not that he cares.

“We got the villains, didn’t we?”

He’s carrying on a sordid affair with a fellow cop who is also the wife (Hayley Atwell) of an Internal Affairs officer who’d like nothing more than to shut down the flying squad. Jack runs roughshod over his boss (Damian Lewis) and makes a point, after a big bust, of closing down the pub with his crew.

“World’s runnin’ out of men like you, Jack.”

Then a jewelry store robbery ends with an execution, and Jack & Co. (Ben Drew is his young protégé) become obsessed with catching the villains who did it, willing to risk each other, scores of innocent civilians and prison terms to get their guy.

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The Stoker house is in mourning.

Widow Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) has crawled into a bottle, weeping.

Teenage daughter India (Mia Wasikowska), already withdrawn from Mom, pulls further into her sullen shell. She hates to be touched, becomes even more of a loner at school, and loses herself in memories of her newly-deceased Dad (Dermot Mulroney) and the heightened sense of the outdoors that he taught her to love.

Then Dad’s brother (Matthew Goode) shows up, all sympathy and smiles. He consoles Evelyn. What does he want from India?

“To be friends.”

She falls under his spell, and his protection. That school where it seems every boy wants to taunt or molest her, the mother who never “got” her? Uncle Charlie makes up for all that. India is intrigued.

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Visit any website devoted to British films and TV shows, and the talk’s been there for years.

“When will they make a movie of ‘The Sweeney’?” And “Ray Winstone should play Regan.”

“The Sweeney” is the iconic, gritty and violent British cop series of the ‘70s. And Winstone, the burly, tough Cockney star of “Sexy Beast,” “44 Inch Chest” and “The Departed” seemed like the only logical choice to bring the series’ central character, the any-means-necessary brawler at the heart of the story, to the screen.

But Winstone wasn’t so sure.

“My first job as an actor was working on the original series,” the actor, who just turned 56, recalls. “That’s going back 30-odd years ago. I was kind of an extra. I grew up watching it, and got to work with the original Regan, John Thaw, one of the great British actors.

“But I was fearful of taking it. He did the part so well, and I just wanted to hide away inside the character. Once you get over that fear, you realize you’ve got to bring something of yourself to the guy and make him your own. I felt a lot of responsibility to the show, and I think we all did, making this movie.”

“The Sweeney,” opening in U.S. theaters Friday, is a distinctly British take on the police procedural – two-fisted, action-packed, gritty and brisk. And Winstone is its beating heart.

He was the only logical choice, said London’s Daily Mirror. He “has the bullish charm, necessary hint of ­violence and mastery of Cockney rhyming slang to play” Regan, a cop who seems to be on the take, who sleeps with a member of his team who is married to one of his superiors.

“The Sweeney,” nicknamed after the infamous murderous Fleet Street barber Sweeney Todd, was “ground breaking TV” in 1970s Britain, Winstone says. “Before that, it was shows like (1960s) ‘Dixon of Dock Green,’ and ‘Softly Softly,’ chappies playing policemen, all oh-so-nice. ‘The Sweeney’ was the first time that British TV depicted working class cops living a working class life. Here was a show that got dirty in showing how the police really go about their business. Not only ‘the villains,’ liked it. The actual straight-goer, as we call the man in the street, could relate to it.”

Winstone could connect to the show, even as a boy, “having met my share of cops, sometimes under less-than-pleasant circumstances. My preparation for this role, I have to say, was 50 years of my life.”

They set out to make a movie to show “how London has changed in 30 years,” Winstone says. “It’s a prettier city, now. It’s still got villains. But a chase through The National Gallery? Why not?

“It’s not a Hollywood chase movie or a French car chase. We made a tough as nails British movie, all about our culture, our slang, our class differences. I think people abroad like that kind of thing.”

It will require a little work on the part of the viewer, he concedes. Those working class accents, the rhyming slang of Cockney, take some getting used to.

“Listen, I remember watching ‘Raging Bull’ for the first time. And for fifteen minutes, I had no idea what those guys were talking about. I could tell it was good, and I stuck with it and eventually I got it. You get used to making out what guys from The Bronx, Brooklyn, New Jersey or Boston sound like. You have to listen carefully for the first bit, and then you get into the rhythm to it.

“In Britain, we understand’em. American gangster speak is like a second language to us. Same with Americans listening to the Cockney accents here. You’ll pick up on it. Even if you live in Louisiana. It is English, after all.”

More people watched the Academy Awards last night, as Variety reports that the Oscars had their best numbers since 2007.

So the Academy, in hiring Seth MacFarlane, in spreading the honors to a lot of potential winners, found a formula that reversed the slide into oblivion that’s been their lot these past 20 years. Briefly.

The final tallies for the weekend at the box office showed the weeks-old “Identity Thief” still showing some legs — $14 million.

“A Good Day to Die Hard” took a deep dip and only hit $10, “Safe Haven” cleared that.

So “Snitch” opened at $13, not bad for Dwayne Johnson, and “Escape From Planet Earth” got one more good weekend in before “Jack the Giant Slayer” sucks all the kid-friendly money out of theaters.

“Dark Skies” came in behind “Safe Haven,” “Die Hard,” a bunch of other films — only $8.85.

“Silver Linings,” which won a single Oscar, was in the top ten. Will “Life of Pi” and “Les Miserables” add on business thanks to the Oscar telecast? I think so. “Argo” too.