Day: June 11, 2010

Not having seen Broadcast News for a decade or so, I rented it for a 24-hour iPhone viewing. And about six or seven minutes in, after the final kid sequence (i.e., the young Holly Hunter‘s) ended and the narrative was about to begin, I was reminded of how nicely Bill Conti’s theme music sells this film from the get-go.

It doesn’t kick in until the last 20% of this mp3 file, or during the final 25 seconds.

It’s just a mild little TV-series melody, but the last twelve notes soothe you down and put you in some kind of mood. For no good reason, I mean. They just sink in and somehow tell you, “The film’s gonna work and you’re gonna be fine…trust us.” And I remembered this same thought flitting through my head when I first saw it 23 years ago. “This movie may or may not be as good as I’m hearing,” I said to myself, “but I like it right now…it’s a light, schmaltzy-sounding tune, okay, but those four chords from those violins and bass violas end the melody with a slight touch of class, and so, nonsensically, I’m ready to roll with whatever the film is doing.”

And all because of fucking Bill Conti. Curious but true. And I’m saying this as someone who can’t stand to listen to Conti’s “Gonna Fly Now” Rocky tune.

There have been other movies and other lulling, curiously charming musical scores, I’m sure. But this is the one I’m thinking of right now.

When was the last time a film as smart and wise and amusing and morally affecting as Broadcast News opened? Movies of this sort are quite rare. You could say they’re close to being extinct.

Holly Hunter: “So…you like me, huh?” William Hurt : “I like you as much as I can like anyone who thinks I’m an asshole.”

“Quite a few of the summer films up to this point have whiffed on the ‘coherent story’ aspect of the equation. Not The A-Team! It’s a remake with verve. One-liners throughout, over-the-top and outlandish action, an internally logical plot structure. You’ll take it. We’ll take it. Consider it taken.” — Laramy Legel, Film.com.

“Somehow [what The A-Team does] is okay. It’s an experiment in propulsion and personality over substance and story, [and Joe] Carnahan directs as if his audience were made up of creatures without thought or memory, who can be distracted only by flashing images and wisecracks. But the sheer motion, the spectacle and the flashes of wit take The A-Team out of the realm of garbage. It’s fun.” — Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle.

“There is no arguing that the movie is absurdly overlong and ridiculously underdeveloped. But the leads do seem to be having fun. The wisecracks are just goofy enough to remain endearing (aside from a few decidedly old-fashioned, sexist insults). And most important for an unforgettable summer action flick, Carnahan knows how to stage mayhem equally well on land and in the air.” — Elizabeth Weitzman, N.Y. Daily News.

A friend says “it might be nice for you to acknowledge the death this week of Robert Radnitz, in my opinion the last great consistent producer of quality-level, doesn’t-talk-down-to-kids family films — Sounder, Misty, A Dog Of Flanders, Cross Creek, Island Of The Blue Dolphins, Where The Lilies Bloom, etc. You’d never catch this guy making Marmaduke!” An L.A. Times writer once called Radnitz “the only successful American maker of children’s films outside the gates of Walt Disney films.”

A standard Disney-mulching of the story of Rapunzel, Nathan Greno and Byron Howard‘s Tangled (11.24.10) looks like the same old family crap, to go by the trailer. Same goofy-rompy vibe, same late ’80s-early ’90s Disney-Katzenberg attitude, same glib and rascally hero, same prom-queen heroine with perfect feet (and a pedicure to die for), same initial hostility between them followed by a gradual warming…zzzzzz.

I was hoping against hope that the Universal Home Video’s forthcoming Psycho Bluray (due on 10.19) might have an optional version with the original 1.37 to 1 framing, which would obviously offer more top-bottom information than today’s 16 x 9 plasma/LCD flatscreen image can afford. But no such luck.

Some people don’t like to hear this, but Alfred Hitchcock protected this 1960 classic so it could be shown in theatres and on TV with a 1.37 to 1 aspect ratio. On top of which many theatres back then were using 1.66 to 1 aperture plates so don’t tell me. The Psycho norm was never intended to be 1.78 to 1 (i.e., the widescreen aspect ratio for high-def video). For the most part Hitchcock expected his film to be shown within ratios of 1.66 to 1 (moderate rectangle) or 1.37 to 1 (next door to a perfect box).

What happened is that the high-def crowd came along about ten years ago and said, “Okay, we’re wiping the slate clean and starting off totally fresh, and as far as we’re concerned all non-CinemaScope films shot from the mid ‘to late ’50s to the present will henceforth be seen in a 1.78 to 1 aspect ratio. Take it or leave it. We realize we’ll be chopping off information that was intended to be seen, but screw it…we don’t care.”

Here are two postings from www.hitchcockwiki.com about this subject, the first from British Hitchcock fan James Whitehead:

“I dug out my ten-year-old VHS tape of a broadcast print of Psycho and ran it on a 4:3 telly alongside the Region-2 DVD, playing on the eMac. Although a little was lost from the sides of the television print, it was certainly not scanned & panned. In contrast, a great deal of the picture was cropped from the top and bottom on the ‘widescreen’ DVD. I can’t take screen-shots of the television alas!

“The composition seemed to me to be more satisfying in the television print. Low ceilings and doorways help to give the picture a greater depth of field. Exteriors also benefitted and appeared to have been framed with the squarer ratio in mind. Take the mountain-range where Marion takes a fateful fork in the road: this shot is handsomely-composed in the television print with the rolling mountains fully in the frame with sky above. On the DVD, the tops of the mountains are brutally lopped off and the composition seems flatter.

“Shots of Marion driving are so commonly reproduced as to be nearly as iconic as the shower scene. Yet some details are entirely invisible on the DVD. For instance the curved speedometer is illuminated beneath the windscreen-wiper — only the moulding is visible as a dark region on the DVD. You might also never realize that the steering wheel has an inner concentric chromium horn.

“The Bates Motel has an illuminated office sign over the door. It is in full view in many more shots in the 4:3 print. Its glow is detectable in some shots on the DVD but the sign itself has been cropped. I am sure Hitchcock wanted it to be seen: it may remind the viewer of the site of Marion’s crime and the way it continues to glow suggests that Norman’s work is continuing.

“The low ceilings and the oppressive stuffed birds of the study are again iconic yet one of the best shots is of a large owl whose outspread wings cast a giant shadow on the ceiling. You will see the owl and miss the shadow completely on the DVD. It dominates the scene as it should on the television print.

“The compositional use of circles in the shower scene is often commented on. Yet the famous reverse zoom shot as the camera screws and retreats from Marion’s face is much less effective when most of the twist has been completed before her lower face is in view. Slightly later, the rounded lines of the basin Norman washes in are cropped on the DVD.

“The hooks on the shower curtain are entirely cropped from one shot – making a very dull frame entirely made up of shower-curtain on the DVD. The hooks are surely the point of the shot as they are later to be ripped off.

“I watched only the first half of the film but time after time, the composition seems more satisfying in the television ratio. It is well-known that Hitch used his TV crew to make the film on a tight budget. It was certainly conceived as a cinema-event — offering the viewers shocking things they could not see on television. So it’s ironic that telly should turn out to be showing us things the DVD misses out! Now, again, the question is just how much of the picture was seen in the cinema?”

A Swedish fan named Matewan offered the following thoughts:

“Psycho was photographed in open matte. That is the same as 1.37:1. But the viewing ratio is 1.78:1. And that is exactly the format of the DVD releases. The 35 mm prints was released with the open matte format and was cropped on screen in the cinemas.

“But there is one scene where the frame is cropped in all prints. The shower scene. The censorship of the early ’60s would never have agreed to release a movie where you could risk seeing certain parts of the female anatomy. But, as I recall, it was only the lower part of the frame that was cropped.

“Also you must keep in mind that a TV always have some overscan. Small portions of the frame is not visible because of that.

“I am absolutely sure that the ideal aspect ratio for Psycho would be the old European widescreen ratio 1.66:1. It’s not as claustrophobic as the 1.78:1 ratio but it’s not as high as 1.37:1. And you can trust me on this. I was a projectionist at a movie theatre with that ratio and Psycho looked far better there than on the DVD.

A note of personal sadness on the passing of politically connected Hollywood publicist Stephen Rivers, 55, who lost a prolonged battle with prostate cancer four days ago. He was a good egg who always dealt with me fairly and considerately. Rivers represented Oliver Stone, Kevin Costner, Jane Fonda and former CAA honcho Michael Ovitz among others, and he always had a line on whatever was going down (or coming up) within Hollywood’s liberal-activist family.

He was fast and energetic and, like any good publicist, extremely protective of his clients. After talking with Costner at a post-Oscar party 10 or 11 years ago I wrote that his head was as big as a buffalo’s, and Rivers responded right away — “Back off on that bison-head thing,” he wrote.

I’m presuming that the work on Warner Home Video’s forthcoming Bluray of the original King Kong (9.28.10) has already been completed so pleading for a de-graining of this film is, at this stage, three and a half months away from release, a moot point. But I’m going to anyway because at least I’ll be on the record as having done so, and because it may make a difference to the Movie Gods later on.

WHV’s Ned Price, George Feltenstein and their team of restorers, remasterers and Bluray transfer artists have repeatedly shown that that no one in the business is more knowledgable or exacting. Their exquisite (i.e., minimally grainy) Casablanca Bluray speaks for itself. For the most part their 2005 King Kong DVD (timed to capitalize on the Peter Jackson version) was a very welcome improvement/upgrade from previous masterings, so I’m not talking about overhauling old Kong too radically — just some digital touchups in this and that scene that will fix certain portions in which the grain smotherings are so intense that they flirt with absurdity.

Nonetheless, let’s hope that the WHV guys (a) haven’t recently succumbed to radical Criterion-style grain-monk theology (i.e., the home-video equivalent of Taliban fervor), (b) understand that certain portions of King Kong are simply too grainy for average eyeball consumption (particularly the scene when the freighter drops anchor off the coast of Skull Island in heavy fog), (c) further understand that Bluray only sharpens and intensifies the monochrome granules occupying a given frame, and (d) therefore came to the conclusion that they needed to hire John Lowry of Lowry Digital to de-granulate in a way that respects the integrity of the image but at the same time recognizes that a classic black-and-white film buried in an Iraqi grainstorm is a bad thing all around, and that the ghosts of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack are hovering over them like Bruno Ganz and whatsisname in Wings of Desire and quietly pleading that they do the right thing.