In the words of noted musicologist Steve Jobs, “It was the chemistry of a small group of people, and that chemistry was greater than the sum of the parts. And so John kept Paul from being a teenybopper and Paul kept John from drifting out into the cosmos, and it was magic. And George, in the end, I think provided a tremendous amount of soul to the group. I don’t know what Ringo did.”

If Jobs had to ask what Ringo did, well, it proves every genius has a blind spot. But the ineffable mystery is this. There are many precedents for single geniuses that spontaneously combust into existence (see Dylan, Bob, or Hendrix, Jimi), but how do four extraordinary elements come together to produce a world-changing hydrogen bomb of musical genius? I’ll leave the Texas School Board to explain that to me. Or, watch the two films in this week’s double bill.

Today marks the DVD release of “George Harrison: Living in the Material World,” the four-hour Martin Scorsese dissection of the life and offhand times of George Harrison. The film’s compiler — not really director (more on that later) — Martin Scorsese, knows from musical genius and genius in general, being something of one himself. His last core sample on this subject, “No Direction Home,” spent four hours getting as close to the genesis of Bob Dylan’s genius as the artist would allow, which is to say, not very. It wisely did the next best thing, which was just showing Dylan being Dylan, while a chorus of friends and acquaintances tried to figure it all out. Nobody came close, of course, and Dylan’s own interview was conducted by his manager, Jeff Rosen, with all of the hardball questioning one would expect of Fox’s Chris Wallace interviewing John Boehner. Scorsese did the best he could – and that is very good indeed – overseeing a compilation of found objects in something that resembled a narrative structure. But in Dylan’s case, good is never good enough. Essential viewing if you are a Dylan fan, but ultimately, a museum artifact, where Dylan’s infinity of talent is definitely not on trial.

Scorsese’s follow-up, “George Harrison: Living in the Material World,”  is not really much different, though, ironically, one of the very few things left out in this tragical history tour was the impact of Harrison’s long creative and personal association with Dylan. The Beatles Creation Myth is front and center here, and as a duly authorized by the Harrison estate project, the archive material takes the viewer on a ride through the highlights. But only in the back seat. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are both interviewed at length on both Harrison and the journey they took together, but they offer few new insights. Ringo Starr lets down his guard only once, when he remembers his last encounter with his dying comrade, but that guard is soon posted again, and the show goes on. Knowing the forensic details of a magic trick does not do that trick any favors, and there’s little magic to be found in the first half of this film.

The second half of the film that deals with George coping with that ever-so-awful burden of huge fame and unlimited wealth drags on longer than the interminable jams that rounded out Sides 5 and 6 of the vinyl of “All Things Must Pass,” and while Harrison emerges as the hero of his own life, we ultimately agree with him that there were compelling reasons why his private life should have stayed private.

Sometimes, as I am sure Scorsese knows, bootlegs reveal far more than official releases, and the weight of being an “Authorized Release” somehow diminishes the end result. Scorsese doesn’t put much of his own skin in the game, and acts less as a director here than a detached observer, and that detachment prevents us from connecting with a story that defined a cultural renaissance. One longs to see Scorsese on fire, beating the creative process into submission in the way that Nick Nolte’s abstract painter bashed out a canvas to Dylan’s 1974 apocalyptic version of “Like a Rolling Stone” in the underrated anthology “New York Stories.” It takes one to know one, and in “George Harrison: Living in the Material World,” as in his other musical hagiographies, Scorsese seems almost embarrassed to confront genius on his own terms, in that secret language he’s privileged to share with his subjects.

A much scruffier and ultimately more revealing insight into the Beatles Creation Myth comes from the 2009 “Nowhere Boy.” This movie is set entirely in those moments when a strange kind of human alchemy transpired, in the grimy laboratory of Liverpool. No attempt is made to explain how the magic happened, but the viewer gets the distinct sense “why.” It’s ironic that one of the most insightful glimpses into the real George Harrison in “Living in the Material World” comes from a long excerpt from “A Hard Day’s Night,” where George stumbles into an advertising focus group, and returns the cynical condescension he is given with a far more withering detachment. The fact that this scene is wholly fictional does not diminish its insight – and the same thing can be said for “Nowhere Boy.”

Based on a memoir by Lennon’s half-sister, Julia Baird, the film was endorsed and informed at extreme arm’s length by Yoko Ono and Paul McCartney, and is far better for their lack of involvement. Lennon is inhabited, not played, by Aaron Johnson, and at no time does Johnson’s performance descend into mere impression. Johnson just “is” – and within a few moments of his first on-screen appearance, you are transported back to 1955, and present at the creation. Primal rock ‘n’ roll fills the air, and a rough beast slouches on its way to be born, and Johnson’s Lennon puts a face on that creature. The film’s director, Sam Taylor-Wood, married the much younger Aaron Johnson after she completed the movie, and her primal attraction does seem justified.

All the bases are covered. The eternal fights with Aunt Mimi, played with prim precision by Kristin Scott Thomas. The strange, almost sexual attraction between Lennon and his uninhibited mother, Julia. And of course, the legendary 1957 first meeting with Thomas Brodie-Sangster’s Paul McCartney. Entire books have been written about this July day at a school fair, where the world turned on its axis. As a card-carrying Beatlemaniac, with a mail-order degree in advanced Moptopology, I noticed that “Nowhere Boy” got all of the details just exactly right, down to the checkered shirt that Lennon wore on that meeting day, and even a brief glimpse of the photographer who took the now iconic picture that is the only record of that day when the world turned inside out. George Harrison’s later back-of-a-bus passage into legend is also documented adroitly, though here, as was sadly the case in the life of the Beatles, Harrison plays a supporting role.

But in ways that no authorized documentary can hope to attain, “Nowhere Boy” gets the human dimensions of the Beatles myth just right. The shimmering brilliance, tragic vulnerability and occasional brutality of Lennon comes through, and the telepathic connection that bound the Beatles together somehow extends to the viewer. Even if huge dramatic licenses are taken, they are not abused. The John Lennon in “Nowhere Boy” is often referred to as a “dick” by his peers – but in this film, the wavering line between “dick” and “genius” is navigated with a drunken precision.

Stanley Kubrick once said that “sometimes the truth of a thing is not so much in the ‘think’ of it, as in the ‘feel’ of it.” “Nowhere Boy” has that feel, and that touch, and brings us as close as we are likely to get to “feeling” the reality behind the myth.

It would be heretical to argue that Meryl Streep’s third Oscar for best actress wasn’t deserved. Streep is a flawless actress and technician, and her supernatural gifts for getting inside the skin of her characters are well displayed here. But, you know what? Who cares? In “The Iron Lady,” Streep is all dressed up, with no place to go. And it’s not her fault.

In its attempts to be a biopic lite, “The Iron Lady” manages to tell the story of the life of Margaret Thatcher without any of those pesky historical consequences – coldly regarding the passions that tore Britain apart through the window of her enclosed limousine. This is not just a failure of execution, it’s a failure of nerve. By framing the story through the eyes of the geriatric, befuddled old Thatcher, the film is profoundly disrespectful – not just of its subject, but of the history that empowered her. Of course Streep commits to her performance, but this commitment is not matched by the filmmakers, who refuse to get their hands dirty. Scene after scene is lined out in that Esperanto of Expositional Narrative 101. Oh, look, boom, here comes the IRA. Wait, there’s Ronald Reagan dancing with Meryl through the miracle of animated Photoshop, whoops, there’s goes another rubber tree AND the Berlin Wall. Even the wonderful Jim Broadbent, as Margaret’s (and the screenwriter’s) fantasy construct of Dennis Thatcher manages to wear out his welcome, something that before “The Iron Lady,” I felt was impossible to achieve.

There are a few Reality Breaks, but too few. These include a few seconds of Punk Rock over stock footage of Britons Behaving Badly, and glimpses of contemporary news broadcasts. But then, we are whisked back into the bloodless drawing rooms of mannered artistic re-creation, and the movie collapses back into itself. At only 90 minutes, it still seems too long, and soon, Streep’s performance begins to resemble the audition reel that must have captivated the producers and director. I imagine they were proud that they left any trace of a political agenda behind them – but the end result is a whole lot of nothing, as if “Ray” had told the story of Ray Charles without his music, let alone his soul.

Speaking of soul, according to Neil Young, “even Richard Nixon has got it.” And our second feature shows us just what the Cranky Canuck meant. Just as it took a Nixon to go to China, it took a lovable leftie loon like Oliver Stone to find that missing soul, and create a biopic masterpiece in the process.

Now, nobody can ever accuse Oliver Stone of either subtlety in ignoring the political elephant in the room, or in paying slavish attention to historical detail. He and his films are nasty, brutish and long, and “Nixon” is his defining moment. Henry Miller once wrote that “every day we slaughter our finest impulses,” and “Nixon” stands as a haunting chronicle of that carnage.

The lend lease program between British and American great actors carries on here. But Anthony Hopkins does not even try to impersonate Richard Nixon. Instead, Stone’s script allows him to do something far more profound. Hopkins assimilates Nixon – and what is more, he assimilates the historical times that contained and were amplified by our most contorted recently disgraced ex-president.

“Nixon” was made during Stone’s glory days in the late ’90s, when he had the box office power to do whatever he wanted. Often filmmakers with a blank check go that bridge too far and disgrace themselves and their audience, but in the case of “Nixon,” Stone was holding a full house. Effortlessly topping his counter narrative of assassination and conspiracy in the inferior “JFK,” Stone creates an atmosphere of gothic dread in every assured frame. Nixon sweats, steaks bleed and in one amazing scene, the eyes of Richard Helms stare at us in utter blackness – as Helms recites a Yeats doomsday poem and we slouch with him toward Bethlehem.

But, here’s the thing. Unlike, say, “The Iron Lady,” “Nixon” is actually fun to watch. Almost twice the length on its superior Director’s Cut DVD as “The Iron Lady,” the time just seems to fly by. Let me count just some of the reasons why. Joan Allen is brilliantly brittle as Pat Nixon, and I’ll trade the entire overwrought latex-faced performance of Leonardo DiCaprio in “Edgar” for Bob Hoskins’ single lustful “once-over” of the buff Marine Guard at Tricia’s wedding. Paul Sorvino gets the coveted “best performance by a moving jowl” for his impersonation of John Belushi channeling Henry Kissinger, and James Woods and J.T Walsh hit epic buddy team rhythms as the Laurel and Hardy of unindicted co-conspirators, that other Berlin Wall, Haldeman and Ehrlichman. And let’s not forget the “J.R Ewing on Acid” cameo of Larry Hagman, as the predatory oilman with the box seat overlooking Dealey Plaza.

And where “The Iron Lady” goes wrong, “Nixon” somehow goes right. Both the Streep and Hopkins film are framed in flashback of cornered protagonists, but Hopkins and Stone turn the amp up to “11,” as the gibbering Nixon sees his life unspool as messily as the tapes he can barely manage to play.

And by refusing to even try to impersonate Richard Nixon, Hopkins somehow creates him, and you are forced to watch him, not just his makeup. The performance comes from the inside-out, not outside-in, and that makes all the difference. Hopkins is part of a distinguished lineage of movie Nixons. Frank Langella followed in Hopkins’ “inside-out” footsteps in “Frost/Nixon,” Dan Hedeya and memorably Rip Torn donned the wingtips in “Dick” and “Blind Ambition,” respectively, and Philip Baker Hall fully inhabited the role in Robert Altman’s “Secret Honor.” This last film comes closest to the modified limited hangout route of “Nixon” in its portrayal of Richard Nixon as a spider in a web not of his own making, but Stone raises the ante far beyond the minimalistic Altman film.

So, what’s the point, you say?

Stone creates a film that is as passionate, contradictory, inflammatory and deranged as the man himself. It reinvents history, and by doing so, changes how we see that history. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” John Ford once reminded us – and the legend of Nixon and his lunatic times are printed here in occasionally smudged blood red ink. You’ll never see Richard Nixon, or his times, the same way again once you watch them through Stone’s audacious and hallucinatory filter. Love him, hate him, analyze him, Nixon is the abyss we look into, and we pray he doesn’t look back. Richard Nixon did have soul – and unlike “The Iron Lady,” this film doesn’t allow us the luxury of denial. Oliver Stone gives us no choice but to watch him slaughter his, and our, finer impulses.

“Nixon” is one of the handful of movies far better in the Extended Director DVD Cut than in their original theatrical incarnation. Any others come to mind? I’ll go first. Since I can’t seem to get through a Salon piece without referencing another Cranky Canuck, Jim Cameron, I maintain his Director’s Cut of “Avatar,” let alone “The Abyss,” knocks the socks of the theatrical version, even without the 3-D. Got any others? And what makes them better? See you (and yours) in the comments!

Cameron’s CGI-fueled saga of the great ocean liner’s fateful encounter with a North Atlantic iceberg, and of the storybook shipboard love affair between upper-crust Rose (Kate Winslet) and raffish, working-class Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio), definitely opened up new possibilities in cinematic spectacle — but not everyone sees that as a good thing. Despite its massive popularity, massive Oscar haul and overwhelmingly positive reviews overall, “Titanic” is a divisive film among critics, with those who hate it complaining loudly about the immense length (3 hours and 14 minutes!), stagey dialogue and flat characterization.

In 1997, Salon’s Stephanie Zacharek described “Titanic” as “a film made with boorish confidence and zero sensitivity, big and dumb and hulking even as it tries to fool us into thinking we’re seeing elegance and gravity.” Geoff Andrew of Time Out London put it even more succinctly: “Cost: well over $200 million. Disregarding the ethics of such expenditure on a film, this unprecedented extravagance has not resulted in sophisticated or even very satisfying storytelling.”

Cameron’s new “Titanic in 3-D” wasn’t screened in advance for the press, and in any case it doesn’t seem likely that this new version will change anybody’s mind about whether it’s a great work of popular entertainment or mendacious crap. Salon senior writer Andrew O’Hehir invited producer and writer and Salon contributor Erik Nelson — a passionate admirer of Cameron’s work — to debate the “Titanic” quandary in an Internet chat session. Nelson has produced or executive-produced dozens of films and TV programs, but is best known as the producer of “Grizzly Man,” “Encounters at the End of the World” and “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” (a pioneering work of 3-D, in an entirely different direction) for director Werner Herzog. He is also the author of the admittedly eccentric “Double Bill” DVD column in Salon.

Andrew O’Hehir: I’m not exactly a “Titanic” hater, Erik — at least not the way some people are — but I’ll admit I feel little or no desire to see the damn thing again. I feel about “Titanic” almost exactly the way I feel about the Celine Dion pop song at the end: It’s an irritating but irresistible pop-culture artifact, and I sort of admire it for its shameless audacity, but I won’t go so far as to say I actually like it. Tell me why I’m misjudging this movie, which is immense in every sense of the word.

Erik Nelson: I knew you’d bring up Celine. Sigh. On this we agree. But Cameron is the Cecil B. DeMille, or “Cecil B. Demented,” of our time, and unlike DeMille, his films may still be watchable 50 years from now. He’s got that same mix of spectacle, hubris, technical mastery of the form and instinct for the mass audience that DeMille had, I think, without DeMille’s cynicism toward his audience. Cameron does not fake it. He makes the movies he would want to watch. And “Titanic” is one of these. Cameron is the anti-Michael Bay, proving that bigger, sometimes, can be better. I have spent a lifetime defending “My Man Jim” from the slings and arrows of responsible film critics. Or people with taste and subtlety.

A.O’H.: Ha! Well, there’s a lot to talk about there. So you don’t see anything overtly cynical or manipulative about “Titanic”? I probably do, and that’s certainly how a lot of the negative reviews are put: All this impressive technology in the background, basically as window dressing for the schmaltzy and ridiculous love story built around the two beautiful leads. You’re saying that Cameron actually values both parts of the movie just as much?

E.N.: Again, he truly believes in his work. And some of the things I take away from “Titanic” are the small things, all delineated in the script. The Titanic’s designer adjusting the clock as the ship prepares for its last plunge, Captain Smith’s last moments before the water explodes all around him, the Irish mother comforting her children, the scene where Jack nervously sketches the nude Rose. Somehow, it’s appropriate that the hands shown actually making that sketch are Cameron’s own — shot way after the fact. I can almost forgive him Celine Dion, for those scenes.

A.O’H.: Those moments are nice, but I will note that you’re evading the question, just a little. How do you feel about the dialogue in the movie? Back in 1997, that was my colleague Stephanie Zacharek’s principal complaint — well, one of many — and I definitely remember the romance between Jack and Rose, despite many visually lovely moments, being undercut by exceedingly hokey and unconvincing conversations.

E.N.: I agree totally with you and Stephanie about the ham-fisted dialogue. But Cameron’s unsung genius is in how he lays out, as a writer, the overall structure of his films. “Titanic” is a perfect example. Reams of historical exposition are slipped into scene after scene, with only the occasional clunker. The entire last sequence of the film, where the ship actually sinks, is diagrammed in an earlier scene, where the comic relief ROV operator shows Old Rose (and of course, us) exactly how the Titanic sank – so when we see it later, we aren’t asking dumb questions about how — and why — the ship broke in half. And again, there are those purely cinematic moments which transcend bad dialogue, and, of course, are so ripe for parody. Think about Rose and Jack on the prow of the ship. Pure corn, but unforgettable. There’s a reason why this film reached so many people internationally — and it has to do with that universal language of cinema.

A.O’H.: Well, I think you’re right about that. I recently asked Stephanie (who is today the lead critic at Movieline) about the reaction to her extremely negative review of “Titanic,” and she told me that for months afterward she was getting heartbroken emails, written in fractured textbook English, from schoolgirls in India and Japan who had fallen for the movie hook, line and sinker. Schmaltz it may be, but its reach was amazing.

E.N.: A man’s reach should not exceed his grasp, and Cameron’s work has a perfect balance of inspiration and perspiration. The engineer in him approaches the creative part with a rigor and thoroughness where nothing is left to chance, hence the perfect architecture of his films. Making sure the submersible works when diving the Mariana Trench and making sure that the mechanics of the sinking in Act 3 of “Titanic” is heralded in Act 1 — that is all part of the same mind-set.

A.O’H.: That anticipates what I was going to ask next, which is about the role of technology and engineering in this film. I feel like one thing critics reacted to was the sense that “Titanic” was a piece of machinery, as much as the great ship herself had been. This is one of those movies that changed our sense of what movies were capable of — not to mention how much they cost. It was a successor to “Jaws” and “Gone With the Wind” in many senses, but certainly that one.

E.N.: Well, in many ways, “Titanic” is critic-proof, but, then again, it’s a manufactured blockbuster by one of the very few people who seems to know how to pull one of those off. It’s instructive to compare “Titanic” with “John Carter.” They have a lot in common. Both are labors of love from pedigreed auteurs, both are old-fashioned epic Hollywood would-be blockbusters, and both are heavily dependent on CGI creating lost worlds. (I’ll just conveniently ignore the “Avatar” connection with the original “John Carter of Mars.”) But here is where Cameron’s strengths kick in. “Titanic” is perfectly structured, and ultimately, except for some dodgy dialogue and, of course, Celine Dion, perfectly executed. No CGI is used for its own sake. It’s deployed in service of the story. And finally, say what you will about egos, Cameron appears to have played with the other children when it came to giving the studio what it needed to market his film, and working with the other creative talents on his set. He is an autocratic dictator, but there is no doubt that he is in command of just about every aspect of filmmaking. As Cameron’s idol Stanley Kubrick once said; “Filmmaking violates the old adage that what is wanted is a system designed by geniuses to be run by idiots. It has always been the other way around with films.” The worst you can say about Cameron is that he is an “Idiot-Genius,” and that is what I love about him.

A.O’H.: That’s a fascinating way of putting it. Because Cameron’s ambitions are so large, in both commercial and artistic terms, and because he’s so relentlessly unsubtle, I feel like he makes an especially juicy target for critics. But there’s another element, isn’t there? The outsize influence of several of his films — definitely “Terminator 2,” “Titanic” and “Avatar” — has changed studio filmmaking, and not necessarily for the better.

E.N.: Not his fault. It’s easy to forget what a debacle this was supposed to be. Hideously over budget, fraught with stories of traditional Cameron megalomania, and even an unknown assailant who dosed the on-set catered clam chowder with PCP. Which was probably when Cameron decided to do a dialogue polish. Anyway, Churchill once described some rival as a “bull who brings his own china shop with him.” That’s Cameron, all over. I remember seeing Cameron on a Directors Guild panel with the other best-director nominees for that year, including Steven Spielberg. When Cameron explained how he built his life-size replica “Titanic” set after consulting with weather experts to make sure the prevailing winds blew the smoke back from the funnel, in the right direction, and how, when he personally edited “Titanic,” he reversed the image in his AVID so he could “feel” the rhythms of the film fresh, you could visibly see Spielberg’s jaw drop. This attention to detail is what makes his films the marvels of populist engineering that they are — and is also a reason why a lot of people just don’t like him. Nobody likes a smartass, and Cameron is both.

A.O’H.: You mentioned Michael Bay earlier. Isn’t he the dark side of the Cameron phenomenon? Cameron has consistently been an innovator, but the people that have followed in his footsteps haven’t had the same integrity, maybe. He convinced us that you could spend $200 million making a movie, and so we get the “Transformers” series and “The Last Airbender.” Then he convinced us that 3-D could look eye-poppingly beautiful and help to tell a fantastic story, and so every crappy comic-book sequel is in murky-looking 3-D. So he’s guilty, I say! Guilty of enabling forgettable but amazingly expensive pictures based on second-rate superhero comics!

E.N.: Well, In this age of “anti-perfection” it’s not surprising that a lot of people regard Cameron with skepticism. But when you consider what happens when “anti-perfection” meets “big budget” and abortions like “Transformers” get made, and worse, become giant hits, I think Cameron should at least get an “A” for pursuing his muse with a vengeance. Jean-Luc Godard once said, “It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to,” and no matter where Cameron goes to strip-mine his ideas, be it the works of William Burroughs or Harlan Ellison, he always takes them many steps further than they have gone before. If others stumble in the ruts he left behind, it says more about them than about the original trailblazer.

A.O’H.: Very well defended, and you didn’t even point out that I was erecting an irrelevant straw-man argument. I guess I’m enough of a realism devotee — accepting that “realism” is itself a convention — that the extreme theatricality and pop-psychology symbolism in Cameron’s movies doesn’t really speak to me. Let me close by asking you a more immediate question: Will you go see the new 3-D version? Are you excited about it? Do you think it will add to the experience, even at a point when the 3-D boomlet has pretty well ebbed?

E.N.: No, I have no plans to see the 3-D version. Even though I have no doubt it is a technical marvel, as I know Cameron personally supervised it, the film was not originally conceived for that format, and many of those subtle moments I mentioned earlier might get lost in the funhouse, which by definition will bring out the most dubious elements of the film. Speaking personally of the 3-D movement, having produced Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” I can truly say I have been there, and done that. Not that anyone cares, but in my opinion “Hugo” was pretty much the definitive work in that genre, and I personally feel that 3-D immersive documentaries, like “Cave” (but without the albino alligators), are the way to go in the future.

And that brings us to our first new double bill, our shotgun marriage of two available-on-DVD films. One is new, and just out, and the other, older, somewhat more obscure. Each complements and/or amends and/or purges the viewing experience of the other.

Cases in point? “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” and “A Thousand Clowns.”

Now what does a high-gloss, Oscar-pandering Important (with a capital “I”) Hollywood version of an Art novel (with a capital “A”) have in common with a mid-’60s scruffy, semi-amateur translation of a now mostly forgotten Broadway hit? Nothing, and everything.

First, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.” Based on the postmodernist novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, the film has a few things going against it. First, it is based on one of those books that many people bought because they heard that it was a brilliant, challenging read. But when movie producers who have read books like this — for all the wrong reasons — try to adapt them, well, you get adaptations like “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” a project that defines the phrase “Eat Your Peas Cinema.” To paraphrase that great unsung cinema scholar, “Charlie the Tuna”: these are films that have good taste but don’t taste good.

This project has all the key ingredients for that recipe. Writer, blue-chip adapter of the un-filmable literary masterpiece Eric Roth, best known for the execrable “Forrest Gump,” the not-as-execrable but getting there “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and the grim “Munich.” Roth may well be the most serious man on the planet, or at least, Planet Hollywood — a man whose light touch was seemingly amputated around the time he completed work on “Concorde: Airport ’79,” which is the last movie of his I actually enjoyed. OK. Two words. Sylvia Kristel. Insert Bob Hope growl here.

Back to our Kitsch Kitchen. The director of “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” Stephen Daldry, recently brought us such fluff as “The Reader” and “Billy Elliot.” Daldry was also the auteur behind the best ever performance by a fake nose, in a film that made me VERY afraid of Virginia Woolf, “The Hours.” And to finish off this recipe of indigestible worthiness, meet the cast. To quote the immortal (I wish. Farewell, Peter Bergman, farewell) Firesign Theatre, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” presents the “average stories of working people, as told by rich Hollywood stars.”

Tom Hanks has what appears to be an extended cameo playing the Jewish (!) middle-class jeweler (!!) big West Side Apartment residing (!!!) father of the tormented, genius, 10-year-old offspring of Sandra Bullock. Fortunately, this young genius is played by a gifted amateur, and “Jeopardy”-certified real genius, Thomas Horn. And did I mention across the street lives Death’s most worthy opponent, Max Von Sydow? Who plays a mute Old Country Grandfather? Who manages to steal the movie effortlessly with every droop of his already furrowed brow?

Enough.

I managed to get through all the above without mentioning once the elephant in the room, the third rail of important drama, the Big Gulp of American trauma, designed to blow through this project like cold ashes, 9/11, or, as it is proclaimed here, over and over (and over), “the worst day.” It may well have been, and this maudlin film somehow makes that day seem even worse. Charlie Chaplin once said about his craft; “If you are doing something funny, you don’t have to be funny doing it.” My corollary to Chaplin’s law is, “if you are doing something important, you don’t have to be self-important doing it.”

In “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” the horror of 9/11 is used to glue together a wholly unrealistic and grating story of un-magical realism, where our aforementioned cast, saddled with endless on-the-nose grim dialogue from Roth, shtick from Hanks, and droops from Von Sydow, perform their oddly passionless play. This is a film about a wholly unbelievable father and son relationship. The streets of New York turn into a wholly implausible combination film set and Disney theme park (with easier parking, it seems). The end result? A wholly unbelievable and mostly incoherent story.

Which is why you might need an emetic after screening this.

Send in “A Thousand Clowns.” Unbelievable father and son relationship? Check. The streets of New York turned into a wholly unbelievable film set? Check. A wholly unbelievable apartment location? Check. A wholly unbelievable and mostly incoherent story? Not so fast, there.

Everything that goes wrong in “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” goes right in this quiet little 1965 masterpiece. It was lost to DVD until last year, when MGM brought it out as part of its “manufacture on demand” release and catch program. Jason Robards gives a career-defining performance as a brilliant man-child raising the equally brilliant “O.W.,” or “little bastard” offspring of his AWOL sister. This little bastard is played wondrously by Barry Gordon, and he and Robards’ film is a smart bomb of precision writing, precision performance, and precision casting. It is funny as hell, too.

Much of this brilliant dialogue is played in ‘60s indie style on the streets of New York, every bit as much a set as their cramped New York walk-up. The distance between New York in 1965 and the present day is both great, and extremely close, and one keeps looking for Don Draper to emerge from one of the Manhattan office towers as Murray Burns seeks gainful employment, with the help of his agent brother, Martin Balsam. Balsam, fresh from his backward plunge down the “Psycho” stairs, won an Oscar for, in essence, one riveting monologue. He is the “best possible” foil for Robards, and for once, the Oscar went to the right guy at the right time for the right role.

The narrative could not be more straightforward, as it is taken almost verbatim from a perfectly calibrated three-act play by Herb Gardner. “A Thousand Clowns” premiered in 1962, back when being a comedy hit on Broadway actually meant something. The film version has all that “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” lacks. It has structure. It has content. The creation of the film adaptation was left mostly to the original creators. And since we’ve mentioned Mr. Chaplin before, the plot of “Clowns” is as old as “The Kid,” and that is probably not coincidental.

Murray, an intellectual tramp and nonconformist, has raised his found object surrogate son, Nick (aka Rafael Sabatini, aks Insert Dog’s Name), with his core values of hedonism, skepticism and an aggressive lack of materialism. Which of course leads directly to concerned social workers who try and, in the end, succeed in unraveling Murray’s private utopia. Society wants the Kid back. And, it gets him. In a tragic yet wholly logical sequence of events, the child becomes the Man, and the Man becomes a diminished Man. But rather than try to build upon a foundation of postmodernist quicksand, “A Thousand Clowns” had nowhere to go but “up,” where “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” went down.

In the words of a focus group study (commissioned by Murray’s dual tormentor and savior, the hyper-neurotic kiddie show host “Chuckles The Chimpmunk”), the audiences for “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” were “noticeably moved.” “To leave the theatre?” asks Nick, innocently, from the “blue, blue sky” of his faux childhood. And, did I mention “A Thousand Clowns” is funny?

The director of the 1962 play, Fred Coe, also directed the 1965 film, but went as AWOL as Murray’s sister during post-production, leaving writer Herb Gardner alone with his brilliant editor, Ralph Rosenbaum. The story of this film’s creation is told in Rosenbaum’s somewhat self-aggrandizing treatise, “When the Shooting Stops, the Cutting Begins.” This book reminds you where his films “The Producers,” “Annie Hall” and “A Thousand Clowns” went right, mostly in that their neurotic creators had the good sense to hire Ralph Rosenbaum. But in the case of “A Thousand Clowns,” no matter who takes credit, the results continue to amaze.

Realizing that Coe had in essence filmed the play and not much more, Rosenbaum and Gardner spent months “opening up” the visuals, which resulted in a kind of postmodernism that works with, not against, the material. For example, when Murray has to “do lunch” in order to get a social worker-mandated job, we see a series of shock cuts of worker bees on the streets paralleling his descent into conformity, ending with an absolutely incongruous image of meat being thrown to lions. Unlike the twee pastiche of “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” this all works, and works perfectly.

Murray manages to captivate and capture one of the social workers, played by a way-too-lovable Barbara Harris. They bicycle through the incandescent streets of lost Manhattan, while he sings in the background, “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby,” with quiet ukulele accompaniment. In this City Of Dreams, every day is Irving R. Feldman’s (the proprietor of Murray’s favorite kosher delicatessen) birthday. This particular vision of Manhattan remains magically realistic, thanks to the quiet craftsmanship, good luck and artistry of its focused creators.

Time stands still on their vision of a best day, where real, earned emotion hard-wires us to a lost era before the twin towers existed, before something hideous emerged from another “blue, blue sky.”

The answer turns out to be easy. By doing what the Disney organization has always done best.Inventing reality. Ducking controversy. And making money. Case in point.

Released this week on DVD, “The Princess and the Frog” is a marvel of neo-classic animation and cultural avoidance. Set in New Orleans, the plucky Princess Tiana’s traditional “I Want” song outlines the plot in all the detail we need. She’s “almost there” to her dream of running her own restaurant, but not so fast. Her destination is changed by an encounter with an evil voodoo man and a hunky and oddly hued prince who apparently hails from the same “Pseudogravia” much beloved in Marx Brothers movies.

There’s not much not to like in this film, but not much to love, either. The terrific score by honorary son of New Orleans Randy Newman keeps things cooking, the hand-drawn animation is a thing of beauty, and every story beat is hit precisely. But overshadowing everything is the elegant sidestepping of everything relating to race and reality. One sly way the film does this is by turning the heroine into a frog, and keeping her that way for most of the movie. The handsome prince and love object of the lead characters, black and white, is some mocha blend of nationality not found in nature. And, of course, by setting the movie in pre-Katrina New Orleans, we are clearly in a fantasy world from frame one.

And, of course, no fantasy sidestepping of race in modern America can be complete without the regal presence of Oprah Winfrey, who here lends her wise and saintly voice to Tiana’s wise and saintly mother.

The end result of all this craftsmanship and corporate second-guessing is as carefully calibrated as the hypothetical gumbo that Tiana plans on serving in her mythical restaurant. One can just sense the nervous calculation behind every line of dialogue and hint of cultural nuance. This flop sweat is as pervasive and stifling as the swamp where our lead characters find themselves.

But Disney has waded into this big muddy of animated racial politics before. And one can be certain that when they went out to make and market “Princess and the Frog” they tried to avoid the quicksand they encountered on their first journey.

Which brings us to our companion feature, “Song of the South,” and the source of my promised frustration. In many ways, “The Princess and the Frog” is the “answer song” to this 1946 progenitor, and when one looks at the history surrounding the original, the flop sweat doesn’t seem so sweaty.

How controversial is this film? Well, here is the corpo-speak statement by Disney chairman Bob Iger to his shareholders when the subject of “South’s” rerelease came up in 2006. “Owing to the sensitivity that exists in our culture, balancing it with the desire to maybe increase our earnings a bit but never putting that in front of what we thought were our ethics and our integrity, we’ve made the decision not to rerelease it.”

Imagine something so controversial that Disney actually puts “ethics and integrity” before profits, before shareholders.

Talk about a fantasy world.

Officially unavailable in any form since its last theatrical release in 1986, today copies of “Song of the South” can only be found lurking on eBay, or on brief clips on YouTube. The film has always had a samizdat quality for Disney aficionados, which of course makes its many pleasures great, but its perceived faults even greater. The closest consumers can officially get to the movie is by buying a ticket to the ride based on the film, Disneyland’s Splash Mountain.

Let’s just say that this experience does not do the original justice.

Set in the post-Civil War era of Reconstruction, “Song of the South” is loosely stitched together with live-action sequences framing a series of animated cartoons featuring Br’er Rabbit and the usual posse of cute animals and blundering villains. These animated sequences still work beautifully, and the first transition from film reality to animated dream, a transition that also heralds the premiere of the joyous “Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah,” represents one of the most magical transformations in all of cinema.

This merging of disparate elements would not again be pulled off this successfully until “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” but “Song of the South” got there first. It was, in point of fact, this then-radical idea of blending cartoons with live action where the project ran into trouble, almost from the beginning.

Development began in 1939 when Walt Disney secured the story rights. From the start, the creative team was well aware of the briar patch they were about to enter. Based on the 19th-century manufactured folk tales of Joel Chandler Harris, an unreconstructed Southerner and serious product of his racist times, the material still seemed to lend itself to adaptation and ultimate Disneyfication.

The road to movie purgatory was paved with good intentions.

Though not overtly racist, Walt Disney was a product of his time, and transcripts of the story meetings contain references to the “pickanninies” that he might employ. But one potential cast member’s consideration gives us a glimpse of an alternate universe — and Disney’s true intentions and sensitivities to charges of racism. Paul Robeson, soon to enter the gates of HUAC hell, was actually Walt’s first choice to play Uncle Remus. Disney planned to work closely with Robeson to cleanse the script of scenes and situations that might offend the black audience. Sadly for both parties, Robeson dropped out, but the final choice for the role, James Baskett, was an example of Disney’s instincts for perfect casting. From the day of the film’s release, Baskett was accused of putting on a grinning mask for white people, but behind the mask he radiates dignified wisdom, and that heat has to come from somewhere within.

Walt Disney found it, and a great actor found the role of his lifetime.

The rest of the live action, starring Charles Crumb’s boyhood obsession Bobby Driscoll as the typical towheaded Disney lad, is more hit-or-miss, especially when Baskett is off screen. Ruth Warrick, the first Mrs. Charles Foster Kane, plays Driscoll’s overly genteel mother, and in a “Citizen Kane” mini-reunion, the brilliant Gregg Toland served as the cinematographer. The overwhelming bright primary colors that wash the screen contrast brilliantly with pastoral scenes of the rural South, which becomes another kind of cinematic Xanadu for Toland.

But it is the live-action scenes where the quease factor can rise for the viewer, depending on what the viewer is looking to find. Archetypal “mammy” Hattie McDaniel makes an appearance, and yes, Uncle Remus makes it clear that he knows his place, and that assumed place does provide some cringe-worthy moments. No history, revisionist or otherwise, can wish those moments away to some “laughing place.” A rosy hue of nostalgia, even one lit by Gregg Toland, cannot erase the shadows that haunted the South’s landscape after the Civil War. Premiering the film in Atlanta probably didn’t help, and Walt Disney and the movie were widely criticized before and during the film’s first release.

The fact that James Baskett would have been barred from attending the Atlanta premiere had he (or any of the black cast) chosen to attend cancels out any sympathies one might have for the filmmakers’ hurt feelings, but the artifact they created is fascinating. Everybody in the movie tiptoes around the Dumbo in the room, but — unlike in “Princess and the Frog” — the uneasy truce they negotiated gives the film its power, and gives Bob Iger his reasons to keep you from seeing it.

But I know what you want to know. Is “Song of the South” racist? Should it be banned?

The answers? Of course, and of course not.

No studio product made in the 1940s with any black character could shake the culture that contained it. “Song of the South” was caught between one tide going out and another one coming in, and was sucked into oblivion as a result. In spite of the film’s disastrous reception, or perhaps because of it, Walt Disney lobbied hard for an honorary Academy Award for his star. Baskett deserved the award he eventually received, two years after “Song of the South” was released. Baskett died a few months later, the first black male performer ever to receive an Oscar.

Why do only the most dedicated of film nerds know this? Ask Bob Iger. Am I reading too much into a 1946 cartoon? Absolutely.

But we can’t debate the post-racial nuances of Baskett’s performance down in the comments section because we aren’t allowed to see it.

“Princess and the Frog” tries to transcend this issue by turning the heroine Green, the hero mocha and the voiceover Oprah.

“Song of the South,” mired in its own briar patch of history, racism and conveniently adopted “ethics and integrity” has no such easy way out.

Dreams don’t always come true, even in a Disney cartoon.