Month: February 2009

Last night I watched William Friedkin‘s new color-desaturated, de-focused, reduced and blended with black-and-white French Connection Blu-ray, which comes out next Tuesday.

From the standard 2005 DVD. Stark, blueish, unprettified.

The Blu-ray image — lighter, quasi-bleachy, snowier, more grain.

I don’t care if this makes me sound unhip — it’s awful, a rip-off, a desecration and a five-alarm burn. The original film (i.e., the version that played in theatres in ’71 and which was captured for the 2005 standard DVD) is plenty gritty and muddy-looking on its own without Friedkin futzing around. Please, I’m telling you — don’t buy this friggin’ thing. Unless you’re a purist monk it’ll just piss you off. Trust me on this one.

Note: Some Came Running‘s Glenn Kenny is not a monk on this matter, as a recently posted essay makes clear.

“Another eerie sign came this weekend when three, count ’em, three (older) academy voters whose opinions I respect all said the exact same thing to me at different times. They weren’t voting for Slumdog Millionaire because ‘it’s just not an Oscar picture.’ I thought it was very strange that I would suddenly be hearing virtually the same kind of reasoning out of the mouths of three different academy members, but there it was. All of them, by the way, had cast their Best Picture vote for Benjamin Button.” — from Pete Hammond‘s latest Envelope column, the headline of which says “Signs Point To Big Oscar Upsets.” Bullshit.

On her daily blog, Jane Fonda describes the play she’s now performing in — 33 Variations — which I’ll be seeing this afternoon with Santa Barbara Film Festival director Roger Durling, who’s in town for a few days.

Bobby Zarem, casting director Bonnie Timmerman, Jane Fonda and “screenwriter Scott” following a performance of 33 Variations

“I play a musicologist of today who is obsessed with figuring out why Beethoven, at the height of his powers, spent 3 years writing 33 variations on a mediocre waltz written by a music publisher in 1819,” she writes. “My character is passionate in her quest for understanding, [in part or largely because] it’s a race against time for her to get a paper written on the topic and delivered to a conference because she’s sick. Beethoven, who’s also a character in the play, is also obsessed with finishing the variations because he is becoming deaf.

“Obsession, passion — these are things I love in life. The fact that people can grow old and become sick and yet their passions remain undimmed. Some of the greatest artistic works and achievements throughout the ages, have been done by people late in life — Monet, Cezanne, Degas, Matisse, Beethoven, Michelangelo, Albert Schweitzer and many others.

“Age and infirmities are as important as we allow them to be. No question that things change as we age. There are the aches and pains. Like jalopies, hub caps fall off, fenders get bent, and we keep on, making a life inspite of it…a life that, as Beethoven and others showed us, can be enriched by these corporal challenges. This play I’m entering touches on this.

“I’ll be doing this play for five months. I could be real scared. I mean, 8 shows a week after 45 years [away from the stage]! But I’m choosing to think of it as an adventure, a challenge. A friend of mine who’s 76 says that at this age you’re supposed to be retired, not looking for new adventures and that I and my friends are unusual. I don’t agree.”

One of my all-time favorite title sequences. Because it visually conveys — gently, economically, erotically — not just what Humbert Humbert (James Mason) will be feeling about Lolita (Sue Lyon) starting around the 10-minute mark, but the essence of the fuel that will drive the dramatic engine. An amazing feat. (Still sequence stolen from Art of the Title.)

Main title sequence from Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita (1962)

“The grim previews of the 81st Academy Awards show on Feb. 22 at the Kodak Theatre, designed by David Rockwell — the modern-day Rube Goldberg responsible for the Mohegan Sun Indian casino, the ugly sets for Hairspray and the Jet Blue terminal at J.F.K. — are already being described as ‘community theater on steroids,'” writes N.Y. Observer critic Rex Reed in a piece that went up last night at 8 pm.

“[They] include a curtain made of 92,000 crystals, a thrust stage requiring an orthopedic surgeon in residence for presenters in stiletto heels, 20 monumental Art Deco arches, the removal of the traditional orchestra pit, lights filtered through silver-rope curtains and strands of silver-leaf balls, 19 screens flying through space and fluted chandeliers floating above the audience, all dominated by the color blue. It sounds like a vulgar stage show in Atlantic City starring Siegfried and Roy, designed to turn passionate movie lovers into dyspeptic movie critics — only a handful of whom will still be awake by the time the five final (and only important) prizes of the night are announced.”

This is funny stuff, but at least Oscar show producers Bill Condon and Larry Mark are trying to re-think things and operate out of the box.

MTV.com’s Josh Horowitz and his team have put together another Oscar montage in which he shares some mock-challenging emotional moments with the big acting nominees (Mickey Rourke, Sean Penn, Meryl Streep, etc.). You know, like Billy Crystal used to do when he was hosting the big show in the mid ’90s? Amusing and technically together; ends nicely with a couple of Oscar kids making actual appearances.

Hollywood Elsewhere strongly endorses the notion of Cenk Uygur, the liberal, blunt-spoken, sometimes combative host of Young Turks, being given the up-for-grabs 10 pm slot on MSNBC. The guy is in the same general bright-nervy-mouthy ballpark as Chris Matthews, only younger. (No offense but I don’t know the other big candidate, Air America’s Sam Seder.) MSNBC needs a young smart-ass GenXer on the team. Somebody to counter-balance the attitude and presence of David Gregory, a.k.a. “monkey mouth.”

“There are press embargoes on many, many films, ” writes Tom Shaw in response to Matt Selman‘s “My Own Private Watchmen” piece, which went up yesterday afternoon. “Usually because the studio thinks that any early reviews would hurt attendance. Just like they would here.

“Sure, we all hold Watchmen dear in our hearts, but consider [the view of] someone who has never read it before.

1. “Far from the ‘all action, all the time!’ previews, the actual movie itself has only a handful of fight scenes, none of which are fair. A young dude beats up an old dude, God beats up the Vietnamese, two people wail on near-incapacitated law officers doing their job, etc.

2. “The setting confuses everyone. What’s Nixon doing being president in the 1980s? I thought the Soviets weren’t a threat and drank themselves into irrelevance? Who are all these ridiculous gang members….extras out of Death Wish?”

3. “The ending: Not really ‘everyone lives happily ever after.'”

4. “And the worst thing: The movie is best described as artistic. Which was the kiss of death to the last two artistic comic movies (i..e, Hulk, Superman Returns).

“So no, if I was Warner Bros. I wouldn’t have early reviews either. Of course, my issue is with the 5% Moore didn’t write. I just don’t see how that 5%, which is (a) all over the internet, and (b) in the last trailer logically ties in with the 95% they did keep.”

Now, that gets our blood going — CG footage of a centuries-old French building in Paris being blown to pieces. But honestly? The footage of that slowly sinking aircraft carrier and the jets alongside got me. It shows imagination. Otherwise it’s obviously a good thing that Steven Spielberg has his executive producing hooks into this film because it ensures he’ll make a lot of money, and if there’s one thing that Spielberg needs in his life right now…

Taking Chance is “austerely nonpolitical,” writes Hollywood & Fine’s Marshall Fine. “It’s [a movie] about honoring one man’s sacrifice, without getting into polemics of any sort. It’s about the shared humanity of everyone Chance Phelps’ encounters on his last ride home and its impact on his escort, played with understated anguish and strength by Kevin Bacon. I haven’t been this moved by a film in a long, long time.”

The fact that Fine, a very shrewd critic, swallowed the bait and wound up calling Taking Chance “nonpolitical” shows you how sly and tricky Ross Katz‘s film really is. It may be one of the most inspired con jobs of all time in the way it walks, talks and acts apolitical…and yet deep down, it’s a film that will warm the cockles of Dick Cheney‘s heart. Taking Chance is about simple sadness and dignity in the same way that Scientologists offering free stress tests are just trying to make your day go a little smoother.