Movie Nation

Oh well, there’s no fighting big box office –– soulless or not. Marc Webb is back on the set with his web slinger.

It’s been a dizzying couple of years for Rooney Mara, the young actress who gained a little attention in “The Social Network” and then worldwide fame for starring in Hollywood’s version of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”

The offers have rained down in a torrent, a veritable embarrassment of riches. She was set to do “Zero Dark Thirty,” but that would conflict with films directed by Terrence Malick and Steven Soderbergh. So no “Dark Thirty,” and Jessica Chastain lands the Oscar nomination. But being a 27 year-old kid in the candy store, Mara isn’t fretting.

“It’s a good problem to have, I guess,” she says. There’s an untitled Malick film in the can, co-starring with Christian Bale and Ryan Gosling. There’s another directed by Spike Jonze on the way, a 1950s period piece by Nick “High Fidelity” Hornby.

“I feel like I’ve eaten TOO much candy over the past year,” Mara laughs. “It’s got me dizzy. But I know how blessed I am to have had these opportunities presented to me, and I’ve been really anxious to make the most of the moment.”

It’s all come so suddenly for Rooney, younger sister of Kate, member of the family that owns the New York Giants football team. You’d be tempted to hate her, or at least resent this strikingly beautiful child of wealth who is burning through a lifetime of “big breaks” in just a year or two. But she’s so good it’s hard to turn hater.

She pulled down enthusiastic reviews for her shaved-head turn as Lisabeth Salenader in “Tattoo.” And her notices for “Side Effects,” her new film for Steven Soderbergh (opening Feb. 8) have a touch of “She has arrived” about them. In the film, she plays a young woman whose pill-treated depression threatens to blow up on her life and that of the doctor (Jude Law) who prescribed the medication for her.

“Without resorting to melodramatic quirks, Mara externalizes the emotional pain of Emily’s depression, her quietly anxious face suggesting the desperation of this suicidal young woman,” Tim Grierson wrote in Screen Daily.

Mara came at Emily in the usual ways – taking advantage of “ten years of research” that screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (“The Informant!” “Contagion”) did in building the character, meeting mental health professionals and depression sufferers.

“And now, on Youtube, there are all these video diaries. People with depression make video diaries, and you see how they look, how they sound, how they say they feel all the time. Interesting. You watch those and you see confirmation of the reading you’ve done, and it helped me get a feel for the overall mood of someone who is carrying that around with them all day. You can read about it all you want, but seeing it on a lot of different faces confirmed how I wanted to play her.”

As convincingly as Mara internalizes every role she plays, Emily was “not someone I could take home with me.” Soderbergh’s sets are notoriously tranquil places where the actors keep civilized hours, “unlike other roles in others movies, where you work twelve hours or more a day, so you can’t help but let her take you over. If she’s going through something awful, you live with that. This wasn’t like that.”

That said, she is ready to take a break after grabbing as much candy as she could for two years. There still are no firm plans to do Hollywood versions of the other “Dragon Tattoo” movies, so there’s no pressing engagement on her schedule, for one. She’s looking at her director, Soderbergh, who has announced his retirement from making movies after finishing a Liberace TV movie.

“I could see taking a break,” Mara says. “Now, I have to. Except I’ve forgotten what you do when you’re not working. It’s like learning to walk all over again.”

(Review of “Side Effects” is here.)

What American smart-aleck didn’t get his or her start reading the infamous Mad Magazine, where parodies abounded, sarcasm reigned and anarchy was the watchword?

What, me worry?

Some filmmakers want to raise $50,000 to make a documentary about this once-glorious institution, and they’re almost there. They’re credible enough to have raised $32,000 of that $50,000. Go here for their kickstarter link to donate and get Alfred E. Newman and his creators on the big screen.

There’s a trend story in this “Red Dawn” remake, “Top Gun” re-release (this weekend), return of Sly and Arnold to their ’80s era Big Screen guises. Was Hollywood betting on a return to Reagan era right-wingery at the polls last November? I may have to ponder and write that, cuz hate mail from mere horror film trolls — saw your Facebook page, Alexia Cavanagh, “troll” about covers it all — doesn’t do it for me these days. I crave the GOOD stuff, the foaming at the mouth variety.

The fact that “Red Dawn” bombed, as have Sly and Arnie, that we didn’t see a Mitt Romney inaugural, and nobody I know has any interest in seeing a 27 year old Tom Cruise dogfight movie with USAF trainers (T-38s, i think?) meant to portray hostile enemy aircraft, that Tony Scott, who directed “Top Gun” killed himself last fall…looks like the movie business was betting on the wrong zeitgeist.

Will Ferrell’s years-long excursion into funny buddy pictures, edgy dark comedies (“Everything Must Go”) and Spanish experiments (“Casa de mi Padre”) is over, so “Anchorman 2” continues to come together as a potential Christmas blockbuster comedy. To ensure that, they’re not relying on Ferrell’s somewhat faded star power alone. They’ve got Steve Carell as a competitor anchorguy, and now Kristen Wiig in a small part as that competitor’s wife.

It has been years YEARS since I linked to anything on Ain’t It Cool. Not a prejudice or anything, I had just forgotten that this groundbreaking fanboy site was there. And “breaking” gossip from there seemed to dry up as the field got crowded.

But they — ok HE — has some notion, perhaps based on something resembling a tip, that the J.J. Abrams “Star Wars” movie will somehow focus on Yoda — early days, Jedi training, later days, something.

Hollywood is phasing out production of 35mm celluloid film prints this year, ending a 120 year technological tradition that dates from the very beginning of motion pictures.

And the last places in North America to show movies that way are, unsurprisingly, dinosaurs just like “film” prints. Drive-in Theaters — scattered across the country — I once visited every surviving one in Florida for a story — were slow to convert.

This LA Times story explains how projection companies are helping them finish up the conversion that regular theaters went through, with a vengeance, just a few years back.

Here’s a shot I took with, coincidentally, my last “film” camera, an Olympus, of the Silver Moon Drive-In, still in Lakeland, still the prettiest drive in theater in Florida.

 The modern reshaping of the economic struggle between East and West plays out in “The Sorcerer and the White Snake,” a sharp Chinese reminder that not all cheese comes from Switzerland or Wisconsin.

A mad, laugh-out-loud mashup of “The Little Mermaid,” “Harry Potter,” assorted vampire tales, “Pan’s Labyrinth,” the disaster epic “2012” and oh – “Pokemon” – just to impose the cinematic precedents on display here, “Sorcerer” is a Chinese twist on the reliable sword and sorcery genre which caused Hollywood to impose “Clash of the Titans” and “Immortals” on the undeserving.

And it could be a point of pride that this effects-driven nonsense is every bit as bad  — in a fun way – as those blockbusters.

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Here’s what we know about Melissa McCarthy’s new comedy, “Identity Thief.”

First, we’re referring to it as a Melissa McCarthy comedy. Her “Bridesmaids” breakout and enduring TV series have made her a reliable comic brand. Yeah, Jason Bateman’s been reliably funny on the big screen for almost a decade, but when you’re hot you’re hot. And McCarthy’s hot.

Secondly, it’s a Seth Gordon film. He did a pretty good job with the dark and funny “Horrible Bosses.”

Third, it’s a February release. Not a January one, which would have been a “no confidence” vote. Coming out just before Valentine’s Day, it’s in prime position to drag in couples looking for comedy without “romantic” being attached to it. Rude and raunchy.

Fourth, reviews are embargoed by the studio until Friday. So that wipes out the whole “not a ‘no confidence’ vote” theory.

The trailers are funny. So fingers crossed.

Gillian Flynn’s novel “Dark Places” is about a woman who witnessed a crime as a young girl, a notorious massacre, and testified against her brother in the trial for it.

Years later, a club of people who like to re-examine old cases tracks her down to try and see if there might be an alternative solution to the crime, that there’s a chance that her brother was innocent.

Deadline.com is reporting that the film version, which was to have been an Amy Adams project at one point, now has the interest of Charlize Theron.