Month: July 2012

If the eight films included in Universal Home Video’s Class Monster Bluray collection are as well-restored as Todd Browning‘s Dracula is reputed to be, then fine — I’ll pop for it or persuade the Uni guys to give me a freebie. But they’ve hawked and re-hawked these films on DVD and laser disc and VHS over and over and over again, and it seems to me that they’ve diminished their lustre somewhat. Appearing to be too much in love with revenue always wounds the brand.

The eight films are Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera and Creature From the Black Lagoon.

I hadn’t read John Weidman‘s “Are You A Homo?“, a 1971 National Lampoon piece, for eons. And then I found it this morning. It’s a snapshot of an urban hipster attitude that wanted to fool around with emerging gay militancy (acknowledge and legitimize but at a distance) and decided to mock the term “homo,” which is one of the funniest terms ever used by straight society. To think that old-school jocks used it with impugnity, without a trace of irony. Weidman’s best: “There are hundreds of homos who lead normal, happy lives.”

Read more

HE reader “Film Buff” (a.k.a. “CH”) has passed along two complaints about alleged substandard 3D presentation of The Amazing Spider-Man at the Arclight Dome — his own and one from a guy named “Spleen” who posted on Yelp.

“Maybe I’m crying over spilt milk, but the experience I had at the Arclight Dome yesterday [on Wednesday. 7.4] was awful,” Film Buff writes, “and I kind of had a hunch that I wasn’t the only one. That’s why I searched Cinema Treasures and Yelp reviews to see if anyone had similar issues the week at the Arclight and what do you know — Spleen’s review on Yelp from a day before confirmed it.

“The Spider-Man 3-D I saw at the 11:00 am showing at the Arclight Dome on 7.4 looked flat and awful, barely any 3rd dimension whatsoever. I know a few people walked out to complain, and that when the film was over I asked people around me what they thought of the 3D and they were in agreement that something was off about it, that it looked terrible.

“It took me forever to track down a manager at the Arclight after the show. When I complained about the sub par 3D, she gave me every ridiculous excuse in the book — (a) “Our 3D looks different then other theatres 3D because we use a different system”, (b) “No, you are wong because studio reps drop by and check our system all the time,” and (c) “It was the filmmaking that made it look that way, not us — they filmed it like that.” That last line was classic — blame Marc Web for our subpar 3D! I had to argue with this lady for a good five minute because I’ve seen plenty of 3D films in my time over the last several years and my eyes can spot a piss poor 3D presentation a mile away.

“The Arclight charging 19.50 ($16 for seeing the film on a “holiday”, or weekend plus the 3.50 3D surcharge) for subpar godawful 3D is appalling. Their standards have clearly gone down in the last year or so.”

Here’s Spleen’s rant with edits: “I caught Spider-Man at the Dome in 3D yesterday morning. It had just opened midnight the night before, so they should’ve been on their A game. Nope. They brought in Team Not My Problem for this event, taking their ‘I don’t give a damn’ pills. The 3D was jacked. I went out in the lobby twice to tell them, and so did other people. I overheard one of the Arclight employees come in, watch a little bit of it and exclaim with a ‘why me’ sigh, ‘It looks fine to me.’ Go make some popcorn, doll. You’re obviously part of the problem.

“Eventually (around 20 minutes into the film) the manager stopped the movie and apologized. The crowd kind of became insensitive jerks about it and gave him a hard time. Come on, people, sometimes things don’t work out. Your reaction should be more, ‘Aw, shucks this is a bummer.’ Not a chance to put this man’s qualifications up for review. But, then after about five minutes of waiting they got everything reset and back on.

“Some of the issues with the 3D were fixed, but then I immediately noticed something new: the 3D was flipped with the background elements in the foreground and vice versa. That was it for me.

“Anyway, I mentioned that the 3D was switched to at least three different Arclight employees hoping they’d alert someone asap and fix it for the poor hapless saps still watching the movie in the Dome, but nary a one had a single fuck to give. One lady even said to me, ‘Well, someone alert the media.’ That one took me by surprise, because I didn’t realize it until later that not only was she conveying her absolute disinterest for their moviegoing experience in general, but also that I was Captain Overreaction for mentioning it.

“That’s mainly why they’re getting the 4 stars and not the 5. But on a positive note, the second screening of Amazing Spider-Man in 3D in Cinema 7 looked great!”

Oh, yeah, right…it was the Russian trailer I ran the other day.

Unlikely as this may sound, I saw the stage production of War Horse last night at the Ahmanson. It’s still a children’s story and still (for me) manipulative and fake, but I liked the show more than the Spielberg film, at least. And I loved the songs, which aren’t integrated in a “musical” sense although they give the show a certain emotional lift. If Spielberg had used them he would have had a more affecting film, I think. It would have made the sentimental schmaltz aspect feel more soulful on some level.

L.A. City Hall, taken from the outdoor court in front of the Ahamnson/Mark Taper Forum/Dorothy Chandler Pavillion.

Sam Raimi‘s Oz: The Great and Powerful opens on 3.8.13. The date in itself tells me something. Disney believes in it but they’re not sure to what degree (the film was shot in 2011), so they’re hedging just a bit. Raimi’s first film since Drag Me To Hell is an origin story about, in a sense, Frank Morgan‘s character in the original The Wizard of Oz, called Oscar Diggs and played by James Franco. Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, Michelle Williams and Zach Braff costar. I distrust family flicks. I go to them with a “show me” attitude.

The discovery of the God particle — a subatomic element that informs the size and shape and contour of all physical matter, “the missing cornerstone of particle physics” — was announced yesterday. Don’t look now, but this is almost (I say “almost”) like the discovery of the black monolith on the moon in 2001: A Space Odyssey. And yet it’s been there all along. The supreme scientific equation…proven.

The “intelligent design” crowd is celebrating this all across America, you bet. I despise what Christianity has become in this country, but I happen to believe in intelligent design also, in a sense. There is obviously a unified flow and an absolute cosmic commonality in all living things and all aspects of the architecture. The difference is that I don’t attach a Bible-belt morality to this overwhelming fact. To me God is impartial, celestial, biological, mathematical, amoral, unemotional, miraculous and breathtaking.

However you define the altogether, He/She/It has absolutely zero “interest” in whether you or your great-uncle or next door neighbor are adhering to the Ten Commandments or having an abortion or helping a homeless person or what-have-you. The molecular perfection and mind-blowingly infinite implications of God are way, way beyond ground-level morality.

“People whose lives are, in their minds, basically about finding spiritual fulfillment and deliverance after they’re dead are ridiculous figures,” I wrote last August. “They’re certainly appalling. The only reason religions are good for society is that they keep the nutters (i.e. those who would otherwise be seeking solace in alcohol or drugs or in the ravings of some antisocial cult leader) in line, and they instill a sense of moral order and temperance among people who lack the intelligence or drive or hunger to seek spiritual satori on their own.”

I’ve been technically ready to shift HE over to WordPress since early May, but reluctant all the same. Laziness, shock of the new, chickenshit…something. Even though I’ve been told that the blurry Safari image problem on iPhones and iPads might be eliminated when the switch happens. But there’s a solution right now — the new Google browser. I installed it on my iPhone a half-hour ago and the blurry thing vanished. Adios, Safari!

Being otherwise engaged during the last Los Angeles invitational screening of The Amazing Spider-Man the night before last and too busy (i.e., too lazy) to have seen it yesterday on my own dime, I’ll defer to Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet on the $35 million opening day:

“Forget the fact that I don’t think The Amazing Spider-Man is very good” — 71% Rotten Tomatoes, 66% Metacritic — “and forget the fact it’s showing in 3-D and on IMAX screens, which means it’s bringing in more money than had it been playing on a level, 2-D playing field. The fact it made $35 million on its opening day, which includes $7.5 million from midnight screenings, is just mind-boggling to me.

“Where’s the demand? Where is the desire to see this movie right away?

“It’s only been five years since the last Spider-Man film and, for the most part, Spider-Man 3 was generally considered awful. And now people are lining up to spend an untold amount of money to see it all start over again as the webslinger battles a giant lizard? Sorry, I just don’t get it.

“Of the $35 million, $4 million was generated from 3-D IMAX screenings and this total now surpasses the previous, $27.8 million Tuesday opening day record held by 2007’s Transformers.”

“When someone reboots a film franchise, as the makers of The Amazing Spider-Man have done, what are we meant to think of the original boot? The first Spider-Man came out in 2002, followed by its obligatory sequels in 2004 and 2007. If you are a twenty-year-old male of unvarnished social aptitude, those movies will seem like much-loved classics that have eaten up half your lifetime. They beg to be interpreted anew, just as Shakespeare’s history plays should be freshly staged by every generation.

“For those of us who are lavishly cobwebbed with time, however, the notion of yet another Spider-Man saga, this soon, does seem hasty, and I wish that the good people — or, at any rate, the patent lawyers — at Marvel Comics could at least have taken the opportunity to elide the intensely annoying hyphen in the title. Or does merely suggesting such a change make me a total ass-hole?” — from Anthony Lane‘s New Yorker review, dated 7.9.

Network’s Odd Man Out Bluray “is quite impressive. Contrast levels are well balanced and stable, most close-ups convey very pleasing depth [and] the noirish dark sequences with the long shadows boast excellent clarity. The best news is that there are no traces of excessive de-noising. All in all, Network’s restoration has produced some marvelous results, and I must speculate that this is indeed the very best Carol Reed‘s film has ever looked.” — from Dr. Svet Atanasov‘s 6.29 review.