No Significant Teal Saturating Criterion’s 4K “Network”

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I’ve just watched Criterion’s 4K Network disc, and I wanted so badly to trash it on the basis of an alleged teal-poisoning. I wanted to do a full Eyes Wide Shut-style meltdown and scream bloody murder, but I can’t do that. Because it’s not that bad in this regard.

90% of the Network scenes are office interiors, and there just isn’t a teal problem indoors. Outdoors you can spot extra tealing but it’s not hugely bothersome.

Yes, the Criterion is a tiny bit more teal-toned than the 2011 Bluray version, but not overwhelmingly so.

The truth is that the 2011 Bluray (which I re-watched this morning along with the 4K) is itself slightly teal-toned in terms of the outdoor street footage, so it’s not a big deal. Yes, the 4K is more color-saturated than the 2011 disc. That’s the only real difference between the two, really. The color on the 2011 disc is less luscious, but the details seem a tiny bit sharper than the Criterion…just a wee bit. My face was right up against the 65″ screen.

Honestly? I don’t think Criterion’s 4K Network disc is all that special or revelatory. It’s pleasant to look at, sure, but it certainly didn’t blow me away. Let’s let it go at that. If you want to spend $35 or $40 on a new Network disc that doesn’t represent a huge visual bump, be my guest.

Clintons Finally Do The Epstein

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Hillary Clinton is testifying before the Congressional Epstein committee right now, but on a closed-door basis. What’s she gonna say? Nothing. Former president Bill Clinton will occupy the hot seat tomorrow. House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, a Kentucky Republican: “We’re going to release the transcripts and release the video as soon as everyone approves it.”

Exploding Hand-Grenade Cookies

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The only good cookies are the 80% chewy, semi-soft kind. Or at least the ones that don’t explode like a hand grenade when you bite into them, crumbs and confectioner’s dust showering down upon your shirt or pants and littering the virgin floor.

Cookie manufacturers who make hand-grenade cookies should be fined if not cuffed. They know what they’re doing — they know what kind of ingredients and what kind of baking protocol produce semi-soft chewies. They know what people like and they churn out grenade cookies anyway. And you know what? They’re public enemies. Truly bad people.

James Cagney in One Two Three (‘61): “I wish I was in hell with my back broken. If I was a third-rate cookie maker, I mean.”

The good kind:

Pre-Dawn Cannes Creepies

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“Wanderer”, posted on 5.13.08:

I woke up at 4:30 again this morning and did my usual, which is to go to the Carlton lobby and use the free wifi there to do some work. On the way over — it was about 4:55 by this time — I walked by a small, dimly-lit club packed with the usual vampires. You could hear the cheap music blaring two, three blocks away.

And right next to the Carlton yet! Are they keeping Sean Penn up? If I were Penn and the music was keeping me up, I would walk down to the club and spit in the doorman’s face.

Hardcore criminals, pearl-clutching wokeys** and sociopaths excepted, is there any lower life–form than clubbers? Drinking and jabbering and hitting on people you want to go to bed with for six or seven hours straight. Indiscreet, loud, coarse.

If you haven’t gotten lucky by midnight or 1 am at the latest, go home and get a good night’s sleep.

A couple of assholes were walking down a dark street near my place — guys who’d obviously been at it all night — and they were talking so loudly you’d have to call it shouting. No respect for the time of night or people sleeping nearby or for God’s general rule, which is that only the aimless and the Godless prowl around in the wee hours.

Walking west on the Croisette a couple of minutes later I heard an American guy say to a couple of friends, “I can’t fucking believe you…300 for a lap-dance?” (That would be $450 US if he was talking euros.)

I ran into an unattractive prostitute with big feet a minute later. She offered the usual enticements. “What I really need is a bottle of water or a can of Coke,” I replied. “You know where I can get that?”

I was feeling thirsty, dehydrated. A door man at the vampire club wouldn’t let me in to buy a Coke or a glass of Perrier. “You won’t let me in for two minutes in so I can buy some water because I’m thirsty?” I said to him. What a dick.

I finally managed to talk the night clerk at the Noga Hilton into selling me a large bottle of Evian. It cost 10 euros or $15 U.S. This town is dangerous.

** There were no pearl-clutching wokeys in 2008. I cheated by inserting this term.

Mediocre Questions Are Infinite Torture

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Return of “No Hugs, Sorrows, Laments — I Prefer Jerry the Flinty Prick“, posted on 8.2.16:

Lewis excerpt from 1995 Sundance Film Festival interview: “I sat down with Jerry Lewis to talk about Funny Bones. The interview happened at the Stein-Erickson. Right away you could feel the testy fear-factor vibe, but I enjoy that as it sharpens your game. Several people (publicists, etc.) were sitting and standing around us in a semi-circle. It was almost like we were performing.

“All through our relatively brief chat I was thinking ‘shit…Lewis is in a testy mood and it might get testier. But he won’t respect me if I ask kiss-ass questions so fuck it…I’m just going to look him in the eye and talk straight from the shoulder.’

“A year or two earlier I’d read and enjoyed Nick Tosches‘ Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, so I asked Lewis if he’d read it. He had, he said, and I knew right away I’d stepped into it. The book was hurtful to a friend, he said, and that was the end of it. ‘Ask me something else,’ he said, steam literally hissing out of his head like a radiator, ‘before I get pissed.’ Before?

“But I liked Lewis overall. He’s tough, shrewd, funny, been around, done it all, seen it all.”

“What I’d really like to see is a story of 90-year-old Jerry Langford, the late-night talk show star who was kidnapped by Rupert Pupkin back in the early ’80s. Jerry is semi-retired but still plugging away, involved in real estate and other ventures, still playing golf, still on the cryptic and blunt side, still disdainful when the occasion requires and is no one’s idea of a gentle or lovable fellow.

“And yet he’s largely unbent and, for an old guy, still full of beans. And he’s nice with kids and dogs.

“Does ‘mean’ Mr. Langford feel badly about still being flinty and not all that considerate with each and every person he deals with? Okay, maybe, but he’s ecstatic about the fact that he’s alive and crackling and living a pretty good life for a guy born in 1926. He’s on Twitter and Facebook and owns over 400 Blurays. And he has a 79 year-old girlfriend that he “puts it to” every so often (i.e., extra-strength Cialis), and he rides a bicycle and walks two or three miles every day and lifts weights.

“Who needs love, kindness and forgiveness when you’ve got your health? Langford pushes on!”

Posted from 2013 Cannes Film Festival:

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What Is This?

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This is a relatively minor matter but then again it’s not, certainly not in terms of Hollywood’s archival history and shared audience memories and whatnot.

Most of William Wellman‘s The Ox Bow Incident (‘43) was shot by Arthur Miller on 20th Century Fox sound stages (Pico Blvd. in West Los Angeles) under the usual optimum conditions. So why is this legendary scene so effing blurry?

This 75-minute film was Blurayed ten years ago (I own a copy) so what’s the problem?

Good Savannah Guthrie vs. Hoda Kotb Dish

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Savannah Guthrie wouldn’t be returning to Today if she hadn’t accepted the devastating, all-but-confirmed reality about her mother Nancy’s disappearance. She’s thrown in the towel.

Not only is Nancy gone, but the authorities don’t have a clue. It’s a cold case. Worse, as suggested yesterday or the day before, this could be the new Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Rob Shuter shares with Maureen Callahan….good stuff. The Today ratings when Guthrie returns!

Emma Corrin Somehow Feels Like An Odd Fit for Austen-world

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A top-tier actress, but she doesn’t radiate early–19th–Century, young maiden vulnerability. She has a look of focused aloofness…of someone who’s not in the proverbial game, as in “ahh, Mr. Darcy!“

Corrin is not quite what she seems. She came out as queer in ‘21, but then dated Rami Malek for two years and then hooked up last year with Zachary Hart. Ambivalent or undecided?

Okay, it’s me, not Corrin. I just don’t like her. Plus she’s just about 30 and looks it. Austen’s Elizabeth Bennett is about 20.

When Playful Equals Thin

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Stanley Donen’s Charade (‘63) is lightly charming but often silly and cloying and full of inelegant distractions. It’s engaging but not top-tier. I’ve seen it exactly once, and I felt vaguely bored throughout..

Charade was made only four years after North by Northwest, and yet Cary Grant appears to be late 50ish at best, or at least ten years older than Roger Thornhill appeared to be in Hitchcock’s film (i.e., 47 or 48).

Too old, in short, to play Audrey Hepburn’s would-be boyfriend, although Grant would have been perfect, Hepburn-wise, if he’d played Humphrey Bogart’s role in 1954’s Sabrina. Billy Wilder offered him this, but Grant declined — mistake.

The Past Isn’t Even The Past

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I don’t like “rosy”, and I don’t care if it’s a generally approved spelling. The core concept is a pleasantly fragrant, just-bloomed rose, and if you’re talking about a robust and buoyant future, the spelling needs an “e”…rosey.

What’s so terrible about prioritizing the rights of U.S. citizens over those of illegal aliens? Congressional Dems erred by sitting down.

HE’s Cannes ’26 Hot List — 13 Films

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If the below films wind up playing at Cannes ’26, I will be happy and jazzed. My blood will be up. Obviously a strong lineup and then some.

1949 (d: Pawel Pawlikowski)
Fjord (d: Cristian Mungiu)
Jack of Spades (d: Joel Coen)
Coward (d: Lukas Dhont)
The Entertainment System is Down (d: Ruben Östlund)
Bitter Christmas (d: Pedro Almodovar)
Minotaur (d: Andrey Zvyagintsev)
Parallel Tales (d: Asghar Farhadi)
Switzerland (d: Anton Corbijn)
The Diary of a Chambermaid (d: Radu Jude)
Bucking Fastard (d: Werner Herzog…a kin of Fitzcarraldo?)
Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (d: Jane Schoenbrun…slasher schlock?)
Paper Tiger (d: James Gray)

I don’t believe that Terrence Malick‘s The Way of the Wind will be submitted. I don’t believe Malick is capable of finishing it. I think he’s flaked and dithered himself into a corner, and can’t figure a way out.