“The Reader” wasn’t last year’s only expensive, exacting and utterly hollow awards-season title; Sam Mendes’ “Reservation Road” is equally guilty of that weird combination of prestigiously buffed shell and needy, grabby interior.

It’s got top-flight actors — Kate, Leo and Kathy, together again! It’s based on a key American novel of the 1950s! No expense was spared in re-creating the prefab suburbia in which their characters are inescapably trapped! It’s no more incisive or moving than a weak episode of “Mad Men”, but — damn, check out the period detail on the appliances!

Over at Slate (which is putting out some of this year’s best Oscar coverage, if anyone’s keeping score), Willing Davidson explores the disconnect between great novels and their unworthy big-screen adaptations. Bottom line: Books can be about emotions; movies are usually about plot.

Truer words, baby. Truer words.

With the Oscars just a few days away, all manner of odd things are happening in the magical world of Hollywood buzz.

Just this weekend, Kate and I witnessed the bizarre spectacle of Larry King interviewing Danny Boyle, Dev Patel and Frieda Pinto on his show; the increasingly disconnected King clearly had no idea who any of these people were, and spent most of the interview making goo-goo eyes at Pinto. Seriously, he’s old enough to be her grandfather … well, her great-grandfather … how old is Larry King, anyway?

What’s not happening, much to my barely disguised joy, is a lot of love for “The Reader”. And with good reason: It’s crap. But don’t just take my word for it; take a hop over to Slate, where Ron Rosenbaum takes the film apart conceit by repugnant conceit, putting it firmly in its place alongside the manipulative Holocaust tripe men call “Life is Beautiful”.

(I do think he misreads “Downfall”, though; that film doesn’t present ordinary Germans as innocents, because there are no ordinary Germans in that film; there are outsiders to Hitler’s bunker, certainly, but they’re still Nazis. Traudl Junge may have her illusions shattered about the Thousand Year Reich, but she’s still a true believer.)

Yeah, Kate Winslet’s still the front-runner for the Best Actress prize. But that’s an issue of attrition; everybody likes her, it’s her year, yadda yadda yadda. Me, I’m hoping Streep pulls ahead at the last minute. Everybody likes her, too, you know.

Just as there will always be stupid, horny teenagers, there will always be people who flock to the megaplex to watch those stupid, horny teenagers be brutally murdered: The “Friday the 13th” remake owned the weekend with a gross of $42.2 million, the best-ever opening for a horror film. Expect to see a lot of hockey masks this Halloween.

Surprisingly, the Clive Owen-Naomi Watts thriller “The International” opened at a distant seventh — below “Confessions of a Shopaholic”, even — with just $10 million. I guess that’s what happens when your evil bank doesn’t turn out to be run by an evil computer.

When will they learn? You can never have enough evil computers behind things. It’s the only way to explain Facebook … obviously, social data-mining is how Skynet keeps finding John Connor. Seriously, see if it doesn’t turn up as a plot point in “Terminator: Salvation”.

It’s a pretty big week for theatrical releases, but I’ve been working on so much other stuff — like the second annual Toronto Romanian film festival, about which more here — that I’ve managed to miss just about everything. And, as you can tell from the lateness of this post, I’m still working. So here’s a quicker-than-usual roundup:

“Confessions of a Shopaholic”: You know, a movie about a ditzy compulsive spender might not be the best thing right now. Dierdre feels the same way.

“Friday the 13th”: Both Andrew and Adam find Michael Bay and Marcus Nispel’s reboot of the venerable ’80s horror franchise more bearable than their ill-advised run at “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. Maybe it’s the lack of pesky subtext this time around?

“The International”: Neither Barrett nor Jason is particularly thrilled by Tom Tykwer’s paranoid actioner, which pits Clive Owen and Naomi Watts against an evil bank. I will be very disappointed if the evil bank is not run by an evil computer. You need levels on this stuff, people!

“Saving Luna”: A documentary about a stranded orca is getting mixed reviews — Adam liked it well enough, while Susan doesn’t have much time for it. (Check out the comment thread developing beneath Susan’s review — you’d think she’d just slammed “Toronto Stories”.)

“Trouble the Water“: Finally, a movie I’ve actually seen. You should see it, too. It’s really something.

“Under the Sea 3D”: I can never resist a 3D IMAX film, and this one was short, so I was able to squeeze in a screening earlier this week. It’s the usual large-format travelogue (narrated by Jim Carrey!), but the images are gorgeous, and it’s got playful sea lions! Awwww! Rad proved similarly vulnerable.

Okay, that’s everything. Well, not everything; there’s plenty of other stuff left to do this afternoon, so I’ll see you all tomorrow …

Another issue of NOW, another interview — this one with Tia Lessin, co-director (with Carl Deal) of the excellent Katrina documentary “Trouble the Water”, which opens in Toronto tomorrow after a year on the festival circuit.

That’s not them in the photo, by the way; that’s their subject, Kimberly Rivers Roberts (and her husband Scott), whose camcorder footage of the disaster provides a ground-level context for the disaster that struck New Orleans, and whose return to the city several weeks later — accompanied by Lessin and Deal — puts an immediate and human face on a story that still seems almost inconceivable three and a half years later.

There aren’t a lot of recent docs that I’d argue need to be seen on the big screen: “Standard Operating Procedure“, maybe, for its exquisite imagery and its mood, but even that works pretty well as a Blu-ray disc. “Trouble the Water”, though … well, here’s a story that needs to be experienced on an overwhelming scale. Because it was.

Have you been following the Joaquin Phoenix thing?

Last year, Phoenix announced that he was putting acting behind him, in order to focus on his music. This sounded like a set-up for an elaborate joke — and seemed to tilt decisively in that direction when it was revealed that actor Casey Affleck was following him around, shooting a documentary about his career transition — but now that Phoenix is back in front of journalists, doing the press tour for “Two Lovers”, he’s taking great pains to remind us that it’s all real.

I’m with director James Gray on this one; it may be real, but it’s awfully disappointing. Phoenix may be a temperamental sort — maybe not on Christian Bale’s level, but I once saw him punch out his own standee because someone had Photoshopped the staunch vegan into a leather jacket — but he can be an electrifying actor, and his performance in “Two Lovers” is up there with his best work.

Trouble is, thanks to Phoenix’ career change, no one’s paying any attention to the film. His decision to drop out of acting has effectively hijacked the press junket the same way Heath Ledger’s death turned the “Dark Knight” junket into a traveling memorial to the actor, which was frustrating as all hell for those of us who wanted to ask questions about the rest of the movie.

I mean, I was blown away by “Two Lovers” at Cannes, and would happily do anything I could to get people to see it here, but they’d have to release the damn thing first — and now I’m hearing the movie may go directly to DVD up here.

Anyway, bottom line: If you’re in New York or Los Angeles this weekend, catch “Two Lovers” at your local art house. And if you run into Phoenix at a club somewhere, ask him to do the responsible thing and just talk the damn movie up a little.

There’s an odd lack of tension in the news today. Oh, sure, Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire” kicked all kinds of ass at the BAFTAs — and picked up a WGA award to go with its PGA, DGA and SAG prizes — but now that it’s gone from underdog to overdog, is anyone really surprised?

The box-office numbers are similarly just sort of there: The mega-sized chick flick “He’s Just Not That Into You” opened in first place, knocking last week’s champ, “Taken”, to second; the encouraging news is that Henry Selick’s “Coraline” placed third, ahead of presumptive hits “The Pink Panther 2” and “Push”.

One wonders how many small children woke up screaming from Other Mother nightmares over the weekend, but not having children myself, it’s a price I’m more than willing to pay.