Month: March 2012

A teaser for the big whoppo-socko-poppo Total Recall trailer that’ll debut on Sunday, 4.1, on the ABC network and online. The opportunistic Underworld director Les Wiseman guiding Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale (Wiseman’s wife), Bryan Cranston (who’s in everything), Bill Nighy, Bokeem Woodbine, Ethan Hawke and John Cho. Digital, gravity-free reboot of the 1990 Arnold Schwarznegger film, which wasn’t bad at the time.

My entire morning was consumed by matters of distraction that had nothing to do with posting stories. It happens.

The trailer suggests that Phillip Montgomery‘s ReGeneration, which Ryan Gosling produced and narrates, is a thoughtful and incisive portrait of the GenY malaise. The problem is that it was first seen two years ago at the Seattle Film Festival, which means it was probably completed in late ’09 or thereabouts. It might have been conceived and formulated by Montgomery earlier that year, or the work could have begun sometime in ’08. Documentaries can take a long while to get off the ground.

At its most current. therefore, ReGeneration might be, culturally speaking, an early Obama administration film, and if so then I’m sorry but no. Because the world has moved on in a thousand different ways. You can’t diddle around for two years waiting to release a film like this.

The ReGeneration talking heads include Howard Zinn (who died two years ago), Noam Chomsky, Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman, Adbusters Foundation’s Kalle Lasn, Talib Kweli and former MSNBC guy Tucker Carlson.

I finally popped for a multi-region Bluray player — a Sherwood BDP-5004. I just couldn’t cough up $500 for an Oppo. You’d never know it from the Amazon product description, but the Sherwood is a clone of the Momitsu BDP-899, and it plays all regions as long you tap out a six-digit code beforehand.

“For a multi-region Blu-Ray DVD player, there are several Momitsu clones that are sold in different countries under the different brand names. The one sold in USA is the Sherwood BDP-5004. While none of the Blu-Ray DVD players at this moment offer the ability to play different zone Blu-Ray DVD players just by putting another DVD in, this is the only one quality affordable Blu-Ray DVD player that allows you to play any Region regular DVD, and as well to play any Zone Blu-Ray DVD by putting a six digit remote control sequence before playing it.

“To change the code on Sherwood BDP-5004, make sure there is no disc loaded and enter 9735XY on your remote, replacing X with the Region code you want for DVDs (0-6) and Y with the Zone code you want for Blu-Ray Discs (1-3 -note that 1 stands for Zone A, 2 stands for Zone B, 3 stands for Zone C). There is no single Region-Free setting for Blu-ray discs, but you can change your player’s region coding at any time within seconds.

“For example, here are probably the only two codes you will ever need: 973501 , which sets the unit to Region Free mode for DVDs and Zone A mode for Blu-rays. This should be the factory default setting. And 973502, which sets the unit to Region Free mode for DVDs and Zone B mode for Blu-rays.”

“These are probably the only two codes you will ever need to use, but here are a few more settings just for your reference: 973532 -DVD Region 3, BIu-Ray Zone B; 973522 -DVD Region 2, BIu-Ray Zone B; 973541 -DVD Region 4, BIu-Ray Zone A, etc.”

I know the codes aren’t going to work exactly like they should. I know they’re going to play little infuriating mind-fuck and Zen-patience games with me. I just know it. The important thing will be to keep calm and stay calm when I call the Sherwood tech support guy, and just try to learn.

Depending on your point of view, the Weinstein Co. either threw in the towel or stood defiant today in its media campaign to persuade the MPAA to rescind its R rating of Lee Hirsch‘s Bully, a moving doc about kids who get picked on and pushed around. The company will release Bully without any rating at all. They’re basically saying “we’ve gotten enough publicity ouf of this ratings battle thing, and we don’t think that opening without a rating will matter all that much as not that many people pay to see docs in theatres anyway. So eff the MPAA…y’know? Who needs ’em? They’re dancing to medieval Santorum values anyway.”

Of course, nobody wants to hear about the all-but-incontestable fact that the whole “protect the f-bomb” Bully mantra was total smoke from the start.

After seeing Bully I wrote a 3.15 piece called “Bully Doesn’t Need F-Bombs.” I explained that Hirsch, the Weinstein Co., Change.org and Bully petition girl Katy Butler “have been trying to get the MPAA to change its R rating to a PG-13, claiming that the f-bombs are necessary for the integrity of the film because they represent the hateful attitudes directed at the victims of bullying in the film. Or something like that. The Bully team is saying it’s important for school-age kids to see the film but they won’t be allowed to if it’s rated R, hence the ratings battle.

“But the whole issue — and I’m saying this with sincere admiration and respect for Hirsch and the film, which is very well done and quite touching — is utter bullshit because f-bombs are meaningless in the context of what’s shown and the flow of the film and the music and the abundant feelings. This is a doc about cruelty, and the measure of that is in the stories of the victims (two of whom have taken their own lives) and in their faces in photographs and home videos, and especially in the faces and hearts of their parents and brothers and sisters.

“Hearing an f-bomb or three or five is absolutely meaningless in the midst of all this tragedy and grief.

“I myself heard only one f-bomb, and a friend/colleague who sat next to me at the screening said he heard only one also. I checked with a Weinstein Co. rep after the screening and was told that the film contains six of them.

“Honestly and truly I didn’t hear the other five and even if I had (or if my colleague had) it wouldn’t matter. The f-bombs are said by kids during some school bus footage, but the sound is from an iPhone or flipcam video so the aural quality is lousy. It doesn’t matter anyway. This film is about stopping cruelty and raising the consciousness of parents who are too stupid or bull-headed to understand that they need to make sure that their kids don’t make other kids miserable by constantly harassing and teasing and slapping them around.”

Am I the only person on the North American continent working the Titanic 3D RealD vs. Panavision 3D story? Apparently so. But long ago I recognized that I’m alone, all alone, and it doesn’t bother me any more.

The long and the short is that next week I’ll be seeing Titanic 3D twice on separate 3D systems. On Tuesday, 4.3, I’ll see Titanic 3D at Paramount’s all-media screening with the film projected with the RealD process and (possibly) a Sony 3D projector. The next day I’ll drive down to see Titanic 3D at the UltraLuxe Anaheim 14, which is the only theatre in the Los Angeles area that’ll be showing the film with Panavision 3D, a year-old process that may deliver a brighter, sharper image. Or not. I won’t know until I’ve compared.

The basics are (a) Roger Ebert and David Poland griped about Titanic 3D looking a bit darkish and filtered when they saw it at special Valentine’s Day screenings in Chicago and Burbank, respectively, (b) I was told by Full Aperture Systems projection consultant James Bond that less murky 3D projection was attainable through Panavision 3D, a 3D image-enhancement system that works with 3D projectors manufactured by Christie, Barco and NEC, (c) Two weeks ago I went out to Panavision headquarters to see a demonstration of Panavision 3D; (d) Panavision 3D seemed well-lighted and well-focused, and definitely looked better than celluloid 3D; and (e) we’ll see what we’ll see when I watch and compare.

It may be that that Ebert and Poland were both unluckily subjected to sub-standard presentations of Titanic 3D, and that there will be nothing wrong or even underwhelming with the RealD presentation of Titanic 3D that I’ll see at the Paramount screening on 4.3.

On 2.14 N.Y. Post critic Lou Lumenick wrote that Titanic 3D director James Cameron “has obviously taken great care in using the technology to enhance the experience of watching his 1997 Oscar winner…the 3D in Titanic is more effective than in most films that were originally filmed in the process. It adds depth and makes the vastness of the titular ship, its decks and corridors look even larger and longer. The already-spectacular effects in the long sinking sequence look even more breathtaking in 3-D. Kate Winslet‘s voluptuous figure in 3-D is one of the most magical effects — along with Leonardo DiCaprio‘s climactic slide into the depths, wonderfully rendered stereotypically.”

Or maybe the Panavision 3D version will look a little bit better. Who knows?

It would so much easier if a theatre in Los Angeles proper had adopted the Panavison 3D process, but (a) I’m told that RealD reps have persuaded an awful lot of theatres to sign exclusivity contracts and (b) it always takes a while for new ideas and new systems to work their way in.

The Panavision 3D version of Titanic 3D will begin showing at the UltraLuxe Anaheim 14, 321 W. Katella Avenue, Anaheim, CA 92802, on Wednesday, 4.4.

In a 2.27.12 piece called “Can Titanic 3D Be Saved From “Filter” Effect?,” I wrote the following:

“Panavision 3D’s system (a) involves no polarization, (b) allows exhibitors to project 3D on white or silver screens, and (c) allows for brighter 3D light levels (which are measured in foot lamberts) than what Bond says is the usual-usual, or 2.5 to 4 foot lamberts.

Panavision 3D, which has only been around for about a year, allows for something closer to 4 or 5 foot lamberts. This cuts into contrast, Bond says, but is nonetheless much more preferable to what most people are seeing with other lower-light-level systems.

Right now Panavison 3D is ‘the very best of all…a very seamless process,’ Bond says.

“The one 3D system that Panavision doesn’t work with, according to Panavision 3D rep Sean Lohan, is Sony’s, which is much less admired among high-end projection consultants. (The Regal Cinema chain, he notes, ‘has finalized a decision to remove any Sony 3D machines they have in the booth.’) And yet in 2009 it was reported that Sony’s 3D projectors are technologically allied with RealD, the 3D projection process that Titanic 3D will be shown through.”

To repeat: I was definitely impressed by Panavision 3D. My pants didn’t unbutton themselves and fall to the floor as I watched the test screening out of Panavision’s Woodland Hills headquarters, but what I was shown did seem brighter than the norm. I really don’t care for that shadowed muddy effect that 3D so often renders, so we’ll see what transpires.

…the fuck? Here’s the iTunes download page for Jessica Pare‘s performance, which was seen in last night’s Mad Men 5 premiere episode. “Zou Bisou, Bisou” (which basically means “I’d like to express my feelings for you in an oral fashion”) was recorded in the early ’60s by Sophia Loren, of all people, and then Gillian Hills. The latter track was produced by George Martin.

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To have finally crossed over, to finally know the splendor of being dead and glistening and eternally omnipotent, to stalk young deer in the forest and the ecstasy of the chase and the take-down, ripping their necks open, arterial blood spurt…aahhh! Wonderfully free, where I want to be, and married.

I respected Twilight, but New Moon (’09) and Eclipse (’10) were so dreadful that I resolved never to see another, so I didn’t catch Bill Condon‘s Breaking Dawn, not even on Bluray/DVD/streaming. But I was thinking what an amazing opportunity to adopt Bella’s POV during her death and rebirth, to take the audience into the tunnel and sense the light at the end of it, and then to bank left and make a beeline for the vampire light instead. None of the reviews described or indicated this so I’m assuming Bill didn’t explore this.

For whatever reason I watched the Mad Men 5 opener twice tonight. Clearly I found it absorbing, but everyone — everyone! — always seem so tense and calculating and pissed off. Don Draper celebrates his 40th birthday in the episode, which means it’s 1966. But the climate feels more like ’64. And I cringe at every nearly moment spent with Vincent Kartheiser‘s character — his big forehead and that snippy expression and those twelve-year-old shoulders and his unrelenting pettiness. My hands-down favorite scene with when Jessica Pare, Don’s French wife, began to clean the apartment in her black underwear.

New York and NPR critic David Edelstein has delivered one of the better rip jobs on…I was going to say The Hunger Games but his criticism is really all about director Gary Ross and his expedient white-beardo ways. Here’s the audio.

Ross “has a penchant for showbiz satire,” Edelstein says, “pleasant in Pleasantville but ruinous in Seabiscuit — a great book about the torturous underbelly of horse racing turned into a lame, movie-ish period piece . He approaches The Hunger Games like a hack. The film is all shaky close-ups, so you rarely have a chance to take in the space, and the editing is so fast you can’t focus.

“The film gets some things right, like the shots of Katniss running through the woods, the canopy of trees above her streaking by. And it has an astoundingly good Katniss in Jennifer Lawrence. She’s not a chiseled Hollywood ing√©nue or a trained action star — she looks real. And without words, she makes it clear that Katniss’ task is not merely to stay alive but somehow to hold onto her humanity.

“A few other actors register in spite of the speed-freak editing. Josh Hutcherson has a strong, sorrowful countenance as Katniss’ fellow District 12 contestant, Peeta. Stanley Tucci in a blue bouffant as a talk-show host, Wes Bentley in a manicured black-fungus beard as the games’ high-tech coordinator, and Donald Sutherland in a white mane as the demonic lion of a president are all you could hope for.

“There’s a terrific score by James Newton Howard that captures moods — wistful, mysterious — that the director fails to evoke. The Hunger Games leaves you content — but not, as with the novel, devastated by the senseless carnage. It is, I’m sorry to say, the work of moral cowards.”

An amazing spot. I’m so hip it took me a whole month to catch up with it. I don’t even like Las Vegas, but I’ll be thinking about the Cosmopolitan if I go there again. (Which isn’t likely.) Hats off to Fallon, Minneapolis, director Steven Alsyon, chief creative officer Darren Spiller and…who else?

Here’s the first Cosmopolitan spot I could find, which appeared in the fall of 2010.

I would vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 (nothing wrong with being 69), but on some level I’d feel more emotionally satisfied if Elizabeth Warren runs. Either way I’d love to see a tough, shrewd, battle-axe woman in the White House. I’m tired of guys and their guy games.