Day: September 18, 2011

Watchers of Terrence Malick, the most media-averse film auteur of all time, know that fluid moving footage has never been captured of Malick working on a set…never. So this 3-minute video sequence, captured yesterday by Johnny Garcia, of Malick and Christian Bale shooting a tracking shot of Bale roaming around an outdoor concert for some mystery project is historic.

Garcia even caught Bale and Malick turning in his general direction and smiling. Really amazing. This is almost as exciting as foootage of a Himalayan Yeti smiling and waving at a camera. The rare footage is almost analogous, I feel, to Vivian Kubrick‘s footage of Stanley Kubrick shooting The Shining.

The video shows at a glance that the bearded, shades-wearing, safari-hat-wearing Malick is highly energetic and animated as he explains what he wants Bale to do. It’s also clear that he’s about 5’10” or so, maybe even 5’9″. (I somehow always imagined that Malick was a bit taller than that…don’t ask why.)

(l.) Terrence Malick (in hat and shades), (right-middle) Christian Bale.

Boxoffice.com had projected Rod Lurie‘s Straw Dogs to earn about $8 milion this weekend, but it’s only going to do about $5 million. Game over. The Alexander Skarsgard buff factor wasn’t enough to trump the iffy reviews and I don’t know what else. Female moviegoer concerns or intuitions about the rape scene? You tell me.

The audience winners of the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival have been announced, and the top winner is Nadine Labaki‘s Where Do We Go Now?. I didn’t see it, and I’m trying to remember if anyone even talked about this film during the festival. Asghar Farhadi‘s A Separation and Ken Scott‘s Starbuck were the feature runner-ups.

Jon Shenk‘s The Island President won the People’s Choice Award For Documentary. Bess Kargman‘s First Position and Cameron Crowe‘s Pearl Jam Twenty. The Midnight Madness award went to Gareth Huw Evans‘ The Raid; Adam Wingard‘s You’re Next and Bobcat Goldthwait‘s God Bless America.

So as of Tuesday, 9.20, In Contention‘s Kris Tapley will be folded into Hitfix and banging out his stuff (along with Guy Lodge). So where are the “Tapley Is Coming!” come-ons, or the easy-to-spot In Contention bullet logo? Right now the Hitfix main page (which emphasizes an undigestive orange-and-blue color scheme) has the usual links to the usual cheezwhiz stories and promotions…and zip about Tapley. Can you imagine adding a big-name columnist to your site and actually keeping this news hidden from casual visitors?

Presumably the In Contention link will appear alongside Drew McWeeny‘s Motion Captured and Greg Ellwood‘s Awards Campaign within the MOVIES drop-down menu. What kind of entertainment site puts its star columnists — i.e., writers who attract readers with an I.Q. north of 85, especially among industry and media types — inside a closet that you need to access with a drop-down menu?

If I was suddenly hired to run Hitfix, the man/woman who designed this site would be fired and out the door so fast that a wind-and-suction effect would scatter loose paper.

I’ve always hated the Hitfix design. It’s indecisively busy and scattered and inelegant. And that godawful orange! One look and you want to leave. It makes you feel as if you’ve walked into a store in Syracuse that sells used hockey outfits and other sporting uniforms. Tapley’s impending arrival has simply reminded me of this.

DVD Beaver’s Gary Tooze is calling the Ben-Hur Bluray “VERY impressive…I was blown away. Obviously from a 65mm film source [and] reportedly restored frame-by-frame…a 1080p in all its glory and around a 2.75:1 aspect ratio. Even things like the ‘Overture’ title are visually inspiring. Many scenes…appear truly overwhelming. The Blu-ray transfer brings Ben-Hur to another level of home theater appreciation…WOW!”

8K scan of 65mm elements, 2.76 to 1 aspect ratio, etc.

Concern: With the much higher resolution I would imagine that the shots of the miniaturized ships and little-doll-solders on board during the sea-battle sequence will be more evident (i.e., more embarassing) than ever Nitpick: Everyone knows that the perfect-world aspect ratio of this Camera 65 presentation is 2.76 to 1, so why does Tooze call it 2.75?

Here’s an early August piece I ran about the Ben-Hur aspect ratio issue.

“We keep you alive to row this ship….row well and live.”

I’ll finally be seeing this film on a big screen in the full 2.76 to 1 aspect ratio (projected at 4K) via
the New York Film Festival screening on Saturday, 10.1.

Part of the curious power of John Ford‘s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is that it overrides its own stoppers. Average Joes look at this thing and go, “Wait…a black-and-white western partly shot on sound stages costarring a couple of guys in their 50s pretending to be in their 30s?” John Wayne, James Stewart and Lee Marvin are straight and steady, but the other actors deliver in the usual Ford cornball style. Andy Devine‘s fat pushover sheriff is ludicrous.

But it has an underlying sadness and resignation, and the story sticks to your ribs and the themes resonate above and beyond what “happens,” and thus the classic stamp.

In any event N.Y. Times columnist Maureen Dowd has written a column that analogizes Barack Obama with Stewart’s “Rance” Stoddard and Gov. Rick Perry with Wayne’s Tom Doniphon. Her point is more or less that Perry is an intellectual primitive. Abundant evidence exists to support that observation. But while Doniphon saw and responded to the world in relatively simplistic terms, he was arguably a kind of realist…at least in terms of what the rough-and-tumble culture of Shinbone was in the early days. No one would call Perry a realist. He perceives through the prism of secular wackazoid sights. Evolution “is a theory that’s out there,” etc.

If Perry resembles anyone in Ford’s 1962 film, it’s Marvin’s Liberty Valance — a guy who basically says “I do what I do because I’m tough and snarly enough…get outta my way.” And who tried, remember, to nominate himself for higher office in Act Three.

A healthy percentage of the HE community has now seen Drive. How did the “room” feel as you watched it? (I’d especially like to hear from people outside the NY-LA sphere on this one.) Is it too artsy-chilly Scandinavian to connect with Joe Popcorn, or could Joe be in the mood for this kind of thing right now? Were any over-45 couples in attendance?