Month: July 2009

Those opening eight minutes from The Hurt Locker were legitimately posted on Hulu today. The clip was apparently stolen out of Hulu’s server and immediately posted by Trailer Addict two or three days ago. I said at the time that offering the clip was an astute marketing move by Summit. The reason is that people don’t trust trailers. Or rather they trust them only so far. A straight eight-minute segment from a film has no “slick sell” or bullshit in it. It is what it is, it gives you an honest taste. Marketers should sell other films this way.

Criterion has done a brilliant job of obscuring the fact their just-released Last Year at Marienbad release is a Bluray as well as a standard definition DVD. To me, at least. I was inspecting the new Bluray releases in Kim’s last night and didn’t even see Marienbad in this section. (Although the SD version was easy to spot.) If it was there my eyes glazed over. Credit goes to Criterion’s played-down, round-blue-sticker strategy of packaging their Blurays in jackets that reflect Criterion’s Peter Greenaway-ish marketing mentality.

The CC folks are clearly open to the concept of getting the attention of Joe Popcorn film buffs, but they’re obviously just as concerned with maintaining that immaculate foo-foo Criterion decorum. Criterion isn’t “selling” the fact that they’re issuing certain films in Bluray as much as letting consumers know this.

Brief descriptions of the 10 Greatest Sci-Fi Films Never Made — Vincent Ward‘s Alien 3, Wolfgang Petersen, Andrew Kevin Walker and JJ Abrams‘ Superman vs. Batman, Steven Spielberg‘s Night Skies, Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ John Carter of Mars, Phil Kaufman‘s Star Trek: Planet of the Titans, Arthur C. Clarke‘s Childhood’s End, Alfred Bester‘s The Stars My Destination, Alejandro Jodorowsky‘s Dune, Ridley Scott‘s I Am Legend and The Outer Limits — comprise a forthcoming (7.15) Times Online article.

A vivid and well-written Woodstock recollection from Martin Scorsese, excerpted from a foreword to Mike Evans and Paul Kingsbury’s “Woodstock: Three Days That Rocked the World,” appeared in last Sunday’s Times Online. “I was to be one of the Woodstock film’s editors,” Scorsese writes. But he doesn’t mention what I was told a few weeks ago by Woodstock director Michael Wadleigh, which is that Scorsese was let go from the editing team when the operation moved from New York to Los Angeles.

(l. to r.) Woodstock post-production team Thelma Schoonmaker, a guy I’m having trouble identifying (sorry) Michael Wadleigh, Martin Scorsese.

“Todd and me are in our cool fishing bibs. Piper’s helping out on the boat. It’s an amazing day that shows how our Creator favored my beloved Alaska, gatekeeper of the continent, and makes a great shot for all the network reporters up here to milk. This progresses me away from my image as some kind of flaky ‘rogue diva’ and back to my image as a tough huntin’ and fishin’ gal.

“But Andrea Mitchell makes such a darn big deal about how I’m quitting in the middle of my term.

“‘You’re not listening to me!’ I snap.

“She says maybe I didn’t want to go back to the nitty-gritty of Alaska politics after the bright lights of the national campaign.

“‘The nitty-gritty, like, you mean, the fish slime and the dirt under the fingernails and stuff that’s me?’ I said. Awesome response, huh?!!” — from “Sarah’s Secret Diary,” a Maureen Dowd column appearing in today’s (7.8) N.Y. Times.

As I walked last night along West 3rd Street (on the southern end of Washington Square) I walked by a young woman wearing a “McCain for President” T-shirt. A blonde, of course, with a Lynn Cheney cut. Maybe 20 or 21, walking her dog, buying an ice-cream cone. “Hey Jett…a Republican,” I whispered to my son, gesturing discreetly. This town is full of eccentrics and that’s what I love about it, but to walk through the West Village proclaiming your allegiance to John McCain…?

“All right, sure. I wasn’t expecting the moment with the little girl. Nobody was. And it got me, okay? I’m human like anyone else and it got me. But it’s over now, see? Let it go. Some of us didn’t like some of what we saw and heard, and enough is enough.”

Would you spring for a Bluray of a 1951 British black-and-white film that was professionally produced but never intended to be a Gregg Toland-level visual masterpiece? I’m planning to in this instance. Brian Desmond Hurst‘s A Christmas Carol, the only version worth owning or watching, has never looked all that radiant, although the most recent standard DVD was fairly decent. A “new state-of-the-art high-def film transfer from the original 35mm negatives” is promised with “digitally restored picture and sound.”

“Close call here. They ended ‘We are the World’ before I could jimmy open my gun closet and blow my brains out.” — Twitter message from N.Y. Times media columnist David Carr, a.k.a., ‘the Bagger.” Update: Carr’s Tweet was actually a re-Tweet — he was passing along an original thought from one Roland Hedley.

I missed Robert Siegel‘s Big Fan when it played Sundance ’09 and haven’t seen it since. It’ll screen here next week, I gather. First Independent Pictures will start a gradual indie rollout in NYC on August 28.