Month: June 2012

Because I’m straight, I’ve never gotten much less enjoyed Robert Aldrich‘s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (’62). So even though I’m totally queer for black-and-white Blurays, I’m on the fence about getting this one. Warner Home Video is putting out a 50th anniversary Bluray on 10.9.12.

And to think that a mere ten years later, Marlon Brando held up the same dead rat by its tail and pretended to take a bite, and then said to his pretty but appalled young lover, “You know, I’m gonna get some mayonnaise ’cause this really is good with that.” And then some laughter as he walked down the hallway and said, “Rat’s asshole with mayonnaise…hah-hah-hah!”

DVD Beaver’s Gary Tooze is calling the Masters of Cinema 1080p Bluray of Double Indemnity “just brilliant! [It] far exceeded my expectations. The more prevalent and consistent grain [is] the biggest attribute [but] the contrast layering is superb and the Bluray exudes a powerful film-like presence. There is more information in the frame, notably at the bottom edge [plus it’s generally] brighter and more detailed. I was mesmerized by my viewing…fabulous!”

Dr. Svet Atanasov, writing for Bluray.com, says “this is undoubtedly the best presentation this stylish noir film has ever seen on any home video format. Detail and clarity are very good throughout. The daylight sequences look sharp and fresh, while the nighttime sequences boast pleasing depth. The blacks are lush and stable, never looking boosted, while the grays and whites are well balanced. I am most pleased with the fact that there are no traces of overzealous sharpening corrections.”

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From a 6.12 N.Y. Times article by Michael Cieply about the all-but-total disappearance of American realism in movies: “Last year Hollywood’s top 20 domestic box office performers included just two movies — The Help and Bridesmaids — with realistic stories about American life, contemporary or otherwise, according to boxofficemojo.com. The rest took place in a fantasy world, like Thor, or abroad, like The Hangover Part II and Fast Five.

“In 1992, by contrast, 15 of the 20 best-selling American films were rooted in realistic, if sometimes twisted, American experiences. Those included Sister Act, Lethal Weapon 3, A League of Their Own, Unforgiven and Boomerang, all of which were released from May to August of that year.

“By 2010, pressure to generate international sales, which now account for about 70 percent of Hollywood’s worldwide ticket revenue, had pushed the simple portrayal of American lives almost completely off the big studio schedules in May, June and July.

“[Mainstream movies] have ceded the cultural mirror role to TV,’ said Martin Kaplan, a professor of entertainment, media and society at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, referring to the studios’ diminishing taste for films that reflect the home audience. “Shows like South Park, Family Guy and Modern Family are where Americans now go to try to figure out who we are.”

Incidentally: Bured in paragraph #15 or #16 is a statement that Billy Bob Thorton‘s Jayne Mansfield’s Car is “set for release by Roadside Attractions next year. Written by Tom Epperson, the film is about British visitors, led by John Hurt, who collide with a Southern clan headed by Robert Duvall.” Hurt is quoted as saying the film “is like an American version of a Chekhov play.”

Anyone born in the late ’40s, ’50s or ’60s grew up with an idea of a sometimes rough-and-tumble American political system that favored the powerful, as always, but enabled the middle and lower-middle classes with a certain amount of security and opportunity. Millions worked their tails off and got ahead, particularly during the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon years. The result was a general sense of fairness and faith in a basically decent system that other countries admired.

That idea is out the window now. Since Reagan, I mean. The oligarchs run the show and the middle and lower-class are humping it double-time on the treadmill so they can stay in place, and many have fallen off and are lying on the floor, grimacing.

As this 6.12 N.Y. Times book review reminds, “The happy one in a hundred had 12 percent of all income in 1984; that had risen to 24 percent in 2007,” and “the bottom 80 percent to 90 percent of the country is struggling hard and has tasted none of the fruits that have been showered on the wealthy. From 1980 to ’05, during which markets soared and America got indisputably richer, fully 80 percent of the nation’s income gains went to just the top 1 percent [while] most Americans’ incomes stagnated, with the middle class getting nowhere.”

What can we Americans do about this? Hmmm. Wait, wait, I’ve got it — let’s elect one of those oligarchs President of the United States! Wow. Thank God for the insight and good common sense of the American rightwing community.

Yesterday Vanity Fair‘s website posted a huge group photo celebrating Paramount’s 100th anniversary, which is also in the July issue. I wouldn’t have even linked if the web version didn’t have the zoom and name-tag function — otherwise the heads are too small. Anyway, nice touch. Some have claimed that certain actors have been Photoshopped in. I don’t doubt it, but which ones?

If I’d done this I would have inserted color holograms of all the stars of classic Paramount films (Alan Ladd, William Holden, Grace Kelly, etc.) and have them sit or stand right next to Chris Rock and/or Glenn Close. Or at the very least I would have created an alternate group shot with all these folks included. Double-wide, twice the size.

Actual Prometheus Coors spots began airing in early May — really.

Ex-mobster Henry Hill, the guy played by Ray Liotta in Goodfellas, has gone to that Queens cocktail lounge in the sky. He checked out sometime yesterday (i.e., 6.12) at age 69. Natural causes?

“We had it all, just for the asking. Our wives, mothers, kids, everybody rode along. I had paper bags filled with jewelry stashed in the kitchen. I had a sugar bowl full of coke next to the bed. Anything I wanted was a phone call away. Free cars. The keys to a dozen hideout flats all over the city. I’d bet twenty, thirty grand over a weekend and then I’d either blow the winnings in a week or go to the sharks to pay back the bookies. Didn’t matter. It didn’t mean anything. When I was broke I would go out and rob some more. We ran everything. We paid off cops. We paid off lawyers. We paid off judges. Everybody had their hands out. Everything was for the taking. And now it’s all over.”

This is a trailer for European audiences? (Not to mention North Africans, Chinese, Japanese, Middle-Easterners, Mongolians and men and women of India, etc.) The editor was apparently jacked on sugar and Adderall and getting a blowjob from someone half the time. I’m not saying Django Unchained is some solemn 1959 Ingmar Bergman film, but c’mon…this makes it seem like Saturday morning fizz.

Here’s another one — longer, more complex, more violent, more Samuel L. Jackson.

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Every day tourists are tooling around Prague on Segways, those electric-powered two-wheel thingies. They’re billed as “green” transportation devices, but what’s greener or healthier than walking? In Ken Russell‘s The Devils, Cardinal Richelieu is shown being pushed around on a two-wheeled cart by an assistant. Russell intended this as a metaphor for corruption, of course — i.e., “this guy is so powerful and arrogant and smug that he can’t even be bothered to walk.” How is the concept of riding a Segway any different?

I can feel it — I can feel that assured, less-is-more, in-the-pocket traditionalism coming out of Trouble With The Curve (Warner Bros., 9.28), a father-daughter relationship drama mixed with a sports story about a hot baseball pitcher (Justin Timberlake) discovered by an aging scout (Clint Eastwood) on his last round-up.

Clint Eastwood during filming of Trouble With the Curve in Macon, Georgia.

Amy Adams plays Clint’s too-short daughter (i.e., wouldn’t she be as tall as Alison?). And Matthew Lillard (an apparently decent follow-up to his work in The Descendants) and John Goodman costar.

I’m not saying it’s baity except for a possible Best Actor nom for Eastwood, this quite possibly (but not necessarily!) being his last acting job, given his 82 years on the planet. Didn’t Eastwood tell someone that Gran Torino would be his last performance? I’m figuring that Randy Brown’s script had to be pretty good to make him want to act again.

I couldn’t find the original link, but an IMDB guy has claimed to have read/heard an interview with “steady” Steve Campanelli, camera operator on Trouble With The Curve and other Eastwood flicks. Campanelli said in the piece that Trouble is “a cross between Gran Torino and Million Dollar Baby, but with a happy ending.”

Here’s a J. Edgar-related interview that Campanelli gave to CJAD AM’s Ric Peterson and Suzanne Desaultels.

The only thing giving me the willies is Robert J. Lorenz, a producer of three Eastwood pics (Mystic River, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters From Iwo Jima) and a longtime AD, having directed Trouble Behind The Curve. He’s a Malpaso “house” helmer in the same way that former stuntman Buddy Van Horn “directed” Pink Cadillac, The Dead Pool and Any Which Way You Can. Curve will be clean and steady because Lorenz surely took his cues from Clint all during shooting, but I’m feeling a bit uncertain. Just a bit.

Here’s a J. Edgar-related interview that Campanelli gave to CJAD AM’s Ric Peterson and Suzanne Desaultels.

(l. to r.) Clint Eastwood, camera operator Steve Campanelli, 1st Assistant Camera Bill Coe, and actor Bee VANG on the set of Gran Torino.

What a difference a little Jenny Craig makes, eh? Seriously — I respect anyone who can take it off and keep it off. Kill the pasta and the booze and the breads and the cheeses and get serious with the workouts, and the results can be amazing. I was thinking as I watched the Mad Men finale that Christina Hendricks is almost at the tipping point. No longer. Can I say “she’s never looked more tantalizing” without sounding like a sexist dog?

But performance-wise? Chops-wise? I’ve always found “Joan,” Hendrick’s Mad Men character, to be such a brittle drag. She’s always glaring, always seething, always clamped down with a stick up her butt. If I saw her coming in my direction in real life, I’d cross the street on instinct. She never warms up.

Damn those awful, stupid, ridiculously lengthy Brightcove video embed codes. Brightcove needs to be drummed out of the business.