Day: May 12, 2014

Comparing the new Criterion Bluray of Howard Hawks‘ Red River to the Masters of Cinema Bluray that came out late last year, DVD Beaver’s Gary W. Tooze, a somewhat deranged but highly enthusiastic grain advocate, writes the following: “[The Criterion version] is quite different from the Masters of Cinema Bluray. The UK disc is darker (richer black levels), more visible damage, less information in the frame and, significantly, more textured grain. I appreciate the grain. So the Criterion is ‘lighter’, smoother and likewise gives a very strong video presentation — but a different, crisper one. It would probably come down to personal preference.” Probably?

“No skyscrapers blow up, no cities are leveled, and while the White House and a football stadium suffer some serious structural damage, the wholesale destruction of human civilization is kept to a refreshing minimum in X-Men: Days of Future Past,” writes Variety’s Justin Chang. “[This is] just one of several respects in which this strikingly ambitious yet intimately scaled entertainment distinguishes itself from so much of its comicbook-movie kind.

“Back at the helm of the Fox/Marvel franchise he successfully launched 14 years ago, director Bryan Singer stages a stealth reboot by introducing a playful time-travel element to the ongoing saga, bringing two generations of mutantkind together in a story that toggles cleverly (if not always 100% coherently) between the political tumult of 1973 and a not-so-distant dystopian future.

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Last night a Wall Street Journal story by Gautham Nagesh reported that recent widespread concerns about the end of net neutrality are being finessed to some extent. “The head of the Federal Communications Commission is revising proposed rules for regulating broadband internet,” Nagesh reported, “including offering assurances that the agency won’t allow companies to segregate web traffic into fast and slow lanes.”

“The new language by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is an attempt to address criticism of his proposal unveiled last month that would ban broadband providers from blocking or slowing down websites but allow them to strike deals in which content companies could pay them for faster delivery of Web content to customers.

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If it costs a mere $13.99 for an HDX (i.e., high-def) version of Sullivan’s Travels on Vudu, how do I justify spending 17 pounds or $28 dollars on an Arrow Region 2 Bluray (out 5.26) of same?

Atom Egoyan‘s The Captive is apparently concerned with the parents of a kidnapped child going outside normal channels to find the perpetrator. It obviously bears a superficial similarity to Denis Villeneuve‘s Prisoners. Ryan Reynolds (who needs to star in a critically respected film that isn’t about being buried alive), Scott Speedman, Rosario Dawson, Mireille Enos, Kevin Durand, Alexia Fast. The musical score is by the respected Mychael Danna (Moneyball), who has also scored Bennett Miller‘s Foxcatcher, also debuting in Cannes.

If a competing filmmaker at the Cannes Film Festival wants to win the Palme d’Or, rule #1 is that he/she shouldn’t announce this in so many words. The general rule is to adopt an attitude of “let the mountain come to Mohammad.” Rule #2 is not to proclaim that his/her competing film “is my masterpiece.” If anyone’s going to use that term it should probably be the jury and/or the critics, no? And yet Naomi Kawase, the Japanese director of the in-competition selection Still The Water, has broken rules #1 and #2 in a May 11th interview with Agence France-Presse.

“For an auteur who has already bagged the Camera D’Or and the Grand Prix, [Kawase’s] sights are set on the top honor — the Palme d’Or,” the story notes. “‘There is no doubt that this is my masterpiece,’ [Kawase] said of Futatsume no mado (literally ‘the second window’ but titled in English Still the Water) which has been selected to compete in this year’s premiere competition. “This is the first time that I have said this about a film,” she goes on. “After the Camera D’Or and the Grand Prix, there is nothing I want more than the Palme d’Or. I have my eyes on nothing else.”

In a May 9th review of the Sorcerer Bluray, N.Y. Times video columnist Jim Hoberman notes the up-and-down trajectory of director William Friedkin‘s career in the ’70s. “The one-two punch of The French Connection (’71) and The Exorcist (’73) made the man nicknamed Hurricane Billy a gale-force talent,” he writes, “[but] the successive failures of Sorcerer (’77), The Brink’s Job (’78) and Cruising (’80) sent Hurricane Billy out to sea.” Favorable re-assessments of Sorcerer and Cruising have, of course, been key factors in the restoration of Friedkin’s fortunes, but nobody ever mentions The Brinks Job. There are reasons for that. I never thought it worked (too broad, too lighthearted, too Damon Runyon-esque) and neither did Friedkin. In his recently published book “The Friedkin Connection,” he wrote that Brinks “has some nice moments despite thinly drawn characters, but it left no footprint. There’s little intensity or suspense and the humor is an acquired taste. The film doesn’t shout, it doesn’t sing — it barely whispers.” But I love this scene in which Alan Garfield, playing Peter Falk‘s dimwitted brother, is unable to resist an impulse.

Travelling caused me to miss Dave Robb‘s 5.9 Deadline report about on-set fist fighting between Teamsters. Robb linked to and quoted from a warning posted on Thursday, 5.8, by Steve Dayan, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 399. “We are finding that more and more members are fighting with one another on-set,” Dayan wrote. “It is my duty to say Knock It Off! When two members get into an altercation we have found that in order to remedy the situation quickly BOTH members will immediately be LAID-OFF. Whether you were the one to instigate the situation or not you will both be released from the job.”

What kind of professionals knock each other’s teeth out on a film set, much less repeatedly or in sufficient numbers to provoke an official warning? Have Teamsters always been duking it out and this is the first time it’s gone public? Or is some kind of internal union issue behind this? There’s almost certainly a backstory. I’ve visited many film sets and the general attitude among know-it-all below-the-liners has always been that the Teamsters are the Sopranos of the production realm — lazy, overfed, truck-driving goombahs with primitive tendencies and less-than-enlightened mentalities. It would seem that Dayan’s posting is some kind of smoking-gun confirmation. Good thing I’m in France or some guy would probably come over to my place and kill one of my cats as a warning.