I drove up to Boston Wednesday afternoon for a 24-hour or so rush through three screenings and three meetings. Things got off to a terrific start when—silly me—I assumed there was only one Jordan's Furniture IMAX theater within a half-hour radius of Boston. This turned out not to be the case, and as a result I missed my last chance to see The Dark Knight (Warner Brothers, 7/18, trailer) before its opening weekend (which is apparently tracking to be a record-shatterer). C'est la vie. Anyway, tomorrow morning, I am going to stop by and observe a very successful summer camp for young actors from the Boston area that is being run by a friend of mine, and then head downtown for press screenings of Oscar-possibility Vicky Cristina Barcelona (The Weinstein Company, 8/15, trailer)—my second attempt—and Oscar-impossibility Step Brothers (Columbia, 7/25, trailer). I should have more on those for you tomorrow night.

UPDATE (7/17, 10:04pm): Today, I got my theaters straightened out, but not my expectations. I'm going to withhold comment on Vicky Cristina Barcelona for a little while, as there is still about a month to go before it hits theaters; I will, however, share some general reactions to Step Brothers, since that opens nationwide a week from tomorrow, and since I was so pleasantly surprised by it: aside from the other Judd Apatow production, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, it's easily the funniest movie of the year so far, offering more laugh-out-loud moments than any other in which Will Ferrell has starred. He and co-star John C. Reilly were sporadically funny in their one previous collaboration, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby—which, like this film, was directed by Adam McKay—but, to me at least, it didn't quite click; this time, it does. Sure, it's infantile, crude, vulgar, and everything else that the usual haters of Ferrell/Sandler/Vaughn/Wilson/Carrey/Black/Rogen/et. al. despise... but it's also wildly amusing escapism that only a complete stiff would not chuckle at. (It's also important to remember that silly big movies like Step Brothers pay the bills for great character actors like Richard Jenkins, allowing them to make serious little movies like The Visitor, which is reason enough to tolerate them!)

I spoke this afternoon with 61-year-old acting veteran Richard Jenkins, whose wonderful performance as Prof. Walter Vale in the critically-acclaimed indie gem The Visitor (Overture) has rendered him the year's first recipient of serious awards buzz. By clicking on the podcast at the bottom of this post, you can hear our entire half-hour discussion, which covers everything from the acting techniques that have guided him through 35 years in the business, to the unlikehood of getting to play his first leading role this long into his career, to the things he researched in order to understand Walter (a real Immigration Detention Facility, etc.) and the things he didn't have to research (he also played the drums—albeit as a child—and has had similar doubts about his life as an adult). You won't want to miss this one...

Last night, in anticipation of my interview on Friday with actor Richard Jenkins (Six Feet Under), I re-watched my screener of The Visitor (Overture, trailer) and came away much more impressed than I did the first time around. The quiet little indie, which cost $5 million to make, has earned about $3.5 million over the 5 weeks it has been in theaters (it's still going strong and will do well on DVD), as well as excellent reviews for its 61 year old star, who spent nearly 35 years in the business as a working character actor before being offered the plum leading role of Prof. Walter Vale in this film by writer-director Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent). What I like most about The Visitor is the way it conveys complex ideas—ideas about coping with the death of a spouse, losing interest in one's occupation after doing it too long, post 9/11 immigration policy, etc.—without ever seeming preachy or condescending, just like some of the best movies of the past decade... About Schmidt (2002), Sideways (2004), and The Squid and the Whale (2005) come to mind immediately.

Also, since good work deserves to be recognized as much as bad, I want to point out that this film was bankrolled by Participant Productions, a small American studio established by eBay founding president Jeff Skoll that has probably had the most consistent track record of releasing excellent films since 2004, when it came on the scene. Among their other excellent films primarily targeted at intelligent adult audiences: Good Night and Good Luck (2005), Murderball (2005), North Country (2005), Syriana (2005), An Inconvenient Truth (2006), Chicago 10 (2007), Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains (2007), The Kite Runner (2007), and Standard Operating Procedure (2008). Their next, The Informant (3/9/09), a crime thriller directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Matt Damon, looks likely to continue the streak.