9:30 pm Update: The 70mm print of 2001: A Space Odyssey that screened tonight at the Academy was a huge disappointment. Academy president Hawk Koch told the crowd that they were about to see a “new print,” and it may have been that…but it was printed way too dark. (That or the projection lamp was turned down for some nonsensical reason.) The apes in the “Dawn of Man” sequence looked underlit and a bit murky. And there was hardly any 70mm detail that popped out. Everything looked like smudgy crap.

I knew something was wrong when the opening titles looked soft and hazy, and then the film stayed that way from then on. If this wasn’t an Academy screening I would ask “did the projectionist decide not to focus for some reason?” But the Academy is a world-class operation that takes projection very seriously so it had to be the print, I’m guessing. All I know is that the image on the screen looked like a mistake — as if the lab had mistakenly smeared the internegative with brown fingerpaint. I left around the one-hour mark, and I went right home and popped in my 2001 Bluray, and the image looked two or three times better than what I’d just seen at the Academy. I could see all the hairs and fibres on the ape coats. I could see all the values that were photographed. It was beautiful.

And — this is almost funny — the 2.21 to 1 image wasn’t quite wide enough. It was just a bit trimmed on both sides so it almost looked like Vittorio Storaro‘s 2 to 1 aspect ratio.

The Movie Godz heard what happened, and I’m told they found Kubrick as he was taking a walk and gave him the sordid details. He scowled and waved them off. “Leave me alone,” he allegedly said. “I don’t know want to hear about it.”

Verdict: Major fail for the Academy, major fail for those responsible for creating the 70mm print and a huge waste of time for anyone who went expecting to see something exceptional or phenomenal.

Earlier: This might sound lame but I’m going to an AMPAS 70mm screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey at 7:30 pm this evening. Before I decided to go I asked myself “when if ever am I going to have a chance to see this at a really, really, really good theatre in 70mm again?” With DCPs moving in, I’m also a tiny bit sentimental about seeing it projected with actual 70mm film that clatters through the gate.

I know they show this sucker in 70mm at the American Cinematheque and the Aero all the time, but the Academy’s projection standards and projected light levels are the best in the world. I haven’t seen 2001 in absolute tip-top, ring-a-ding form since the mid ’80s.

Yesterday morning’s Oscar Poker recording started off bad, bad, bad all over. My wifi crapped out in the middle of things, and Sasha wasn’t that enthused to begin with because she hadn’t seen anything new. But we agreed to talk about box-office and the Sight and Sound poll and Clint Eastwood‘s endorsement of Mitt Romney., etc. Here’s a stand-alone mp3 link.

Tony Gilroy‘s The Bourne Legacy is a respectable 7.5 compared to the 8.5 or 9 that is Paul Greengrass‘s Bourne Ultimatum. That’s definitely not a putdown as I felt fully engaged and occasionally revved by this fourth installment. I just wasn’t floored or super-throttled. It didn’t leave me breathless, but I wasn’t the least bit bored and I took no texting or bathroom breaks.

You can bitch if you want, but Legacy is what it is — a smart, cagey, nimble and well-crafted Bourne flick without Matt Damon but with the steely and severe and highly expressive Jeremy Renner. Which is well and good because Renner has become the guy with the presence — he has his own expressionistic attitude and energy force, and I don’t need Damon when he’s around.

But Gilroy is capable of much more than delivering a Bourne-eo follow-up to two Greengrasses and one Doug Liman. He’s a highly efficient helmer who knows from high-end coolness, and who lives in a refined and sophisticated realm, etc.. The comfort and excitement levels are considerable in Legacy, but I wanted something deeper, crazier, darker, stranger. Or more layered. Or dryer. Because Gilroy is Gilroy. He’s no sequel-izer bunny.

I would have liked Legacy more, in other words, if the Universal suits had poured cups of herbal tea and sat down at the conference table and said to Gilroy, “We know you’re much better than what we need, or what we think we want…we both know you’re much, much more than some razamatazz hack…so please, do something of your own…fuck the Matt Damon fanbase, fuck Paul Greengrass, fuck the revenues from the series so far….that was then, this is now…we need you to step out and give us a really smart thriller that fiddles with but doesn’t scrupulously follow the Bourne legend, and just…we’re not sure but something that settles down and gets real and maybe gives up some of that old Michael Clayton action. We’re trying to be wiser than just fools who chase income. We believe in you because you’re smarter than we are. We’re studio executives who will never know anything, ever. So take our money, go to town and make something that doesn’t necessarily kiss the ass of the three previous Bourne films.”

Instead, the Universal executives said to Gilroy, “Please go out and make us a movie that kisses the ass of the three previous Bourne films. We’re thinking strategically here, we don’t know any better and that’s what we want. We want to you to do this so that Bourne fans who don’t read reviews will pay to see it and buy popcorn in the bargain, and that way we can all make more money — you, your brother Dan, your editor brother John, Ron Meyer, all of us — and increase the value of Universal stock and also buy new cars and pay for college tuitions and take vacations in Belize and so on.”

Renner is not playing Jason Bourne but Aaron Cross, a stud-case operative for the CIA’s Treadstone/Operation Outcome who’s become a target after the program is “infected” by Jason Bourne’s arrival in Manhattan (yes, Legacy‘s first act overlaps with Ultimatum‘s third act) and CIA yuppie hard-ass Eric Byer (Edward Norton) declares that all the agents in the pool have to be eliminated. And so the chase is on and blah, blah. Except Renner needs “chems” to remain at peak performance levels, and that leads him to a genetic scientist (Rachel Weisz) who’s in charge of testing and developing said “chems,” etc. She too is on the hit list, and…I’m not going to run down the whole plot, or even half of it. I’m not a court stenographer. If you want to know what happens, buy a ticket.

Suffice that Legacy kicks in big-time during a shoot-out scene inside and near Weisz’s home, and it also kicks serious ass during a third-act scooter race in Manila. But honestly? Good as the Manila chase sequence is, it’s a little bit reminiscent of the Tangier chase sequence in Ultimatum. So Legacy doesn’t really feel like its own bird.

But it’s pretty good in many sections, and I wasn’t “disappointed.” I was like “yeah…this is good, I like it….I may not be doing cartwheels in the lobby but I have no real problems or issues. I’m not pissed off, I had a good time at the movies and yaddah-yaddah.” So I’m not being snide or dismissive. Legacy is somewhere between fine and better than okay. It’s just not earthshaking.

I felt a teeny bit antsy and uncertain about contacting Roger Avary following his release from jail a couple of years back. (He did time for DUI manslaughter that resulted in the death of a friend.) I’ve been a fan and admirer since the Pulp Fiction days, but I didn’t know if he’d want to hear from guys like me. But this morning a Locarno Film Festival interview that he gave to Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn signalled that he’s back. So I wrote him and hope to say hello sometime soon.

After doing so I was immediately reminded that I’ve never seen Glitterati, the feature-length version of a sequence that appeared in Avary’s The Rules of Attraction (’02). Avary showed me a portion about ten years ago, but I never sat down and saw the whole thing. Here’s Avary’s YouTube explanation of what it is/was:

“For this sequence, from The Rules of Attraction (2002), I directed Kip Pardue to remain in character as the vacant, vapid, and self-absorbed Victor from the moment we stepped onto the plane to Europe until the moment we returned to Los Angeles. A blinding twelve cities in two weeks shooting every possible moment on a Sony PD-150. It was an endurance test. I told Kip that I would have 24/7 access — no matter how intimate the situation.

“With no script, and the loosest of plans, I tracked Victor as he partied across Europe in the shell-shocked weeks following 9/11. We would be raving with Paul Oakenfold one day in Dublin, and then at a Ford model party in Paris the next. Five minutes into a conversation with, say, an heiress or a model, I would stop shooting, explain who we were, that Victor was actually the actor Kip Pardue, and that we were shooting a scene for my latest film, The Rules of Attraction. Our only other crew member, Academy Award-winning producer Greg Shapiro, would then step forward and get them to sign a waiver, and then Victor would proceed to dawn.

“I didn’t sleep more than a few hours those two weeks. Months later, Kip would receive calls from the various girls Victor had hooked up with who were confused as to what was real and what wasn’t. Who were we? Where is Victor? I cut the 70 hours of footage down to these 4 minutes which I cut into the film. Years later I decided to form the unused footage into a musical tone-film of all it’s own: Glitterati.”

Here’s a piece I ran in October 2002, called “La Dolce Victor“:

“Roger Avary’s Glitterati is a kind of dramatic documentary about a European debauch enjoyed in September and October of ’01 by Rules of Attraction costar Kip Pardue. Or rather, technically speaking, by Pardue’s character, Victor Johnson, since Pardue stayed more or less in character during filming.

“The footage was initially intended to be used for a brief episode in Rules. It became that and, for my money, is easily the single coolest portion.

“Now, however, Avary has decided to expand the 70 hours of footage he captured of Pardue running around Europe and getting down with various women into a feature-length docudrama. Avary is about halfway into the editing, and is hoping to put the finished product into theatres before it goes to DVD sometime next year. I was shown two or three clips and found them…well, a lot more than fascinating.

“Avary followed the 26-year-old actor around in all these cities with two video cameras — the larger and more professional-level Sony DP 150 and a smaller Sony PC 9.

Every woman Pardue met and hooked up with signed a release obtained by producer Greg Shapiro with an understanding the footage being shot was for inclusion in a feature film. And according to Avary, they all went for it hook, line and sinker, even to the point of making out with Pardue and, to some extent (I’m not sure how explicit the footage will be in the end), having sex with him on camera.

“I didn’t see enough footage to be able to tell if Avary pays as much attention to the European scenery and tourist sights as he did the women, but the thing captures the way Europe can look and smell and sound to a touring, hang-it-all youth who’s constantly distracted or on the move.

I absolutely love this portion: “The look of Glitterati on Avary’s Macintosh flat-panel screen was awesome as well. The video footage seemed to have the texture of film, except for those odd moments when sunlight would hit somebody’s face and that portion of the image would briefly white-out. The footage seemed more textured than what video usually delivers, and yet like something other than film — it’s some kind of hybrid. If only digital video could look this good on a big screen (pixellation is always visible when you blow things up), the whole video-to-film thing would be a much more tantalizing option.”

There’s this bizarre blogger/commentator sub-cabal that believes Zero Dark Thirty is a bad title. I think it’s genius-level — one of the coolest-sounding, totally-owns-the-room titles ever. Partly, I admit, because the meaning (i.e., pitch dark or dead of night) isn’t precisely, immediately clear to the dumb-asses. That’s why it’s dead-on because it radiates coolness, confidence, authority. It says “we know and you ought to.”

And yet MCN’s David Poland and Variety‘s Jeff Sneider have tweeted that it doesn’t work, etc. Presumably others feel the same way. Apart from the fact that it totally works, they don’t seem to understand that capitulating to the idiots is a form of spiritual and cultural suicide. NEVER dumb things down. Beakers of hemlock are preferable.

After ballyhooing Baz Luhrman‘s The Great Gatsby at last April’s Cinemacon and debuting an audacious, high-style trailer in late May, Warner Bros. has cancelled the 12.25 release of this 3D adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel. The new plan is to open it sometime next summer. Dashed expectations, “oh, no!,” car skids off road, call AAA.

First Gravity got yanked and sent into 2013. And then the Aurora massacre took down Gangster Squad. And now Gatsby is off to the showers and/or back to the refitting room. Why didn’t they boot Cloud Atlas into 2013 while they were at it? Is there any chance they could delay The Hobbitt? Just asking.

Scenario #1: It was agreed that Luhrman’s film, which finished principal photography on 12.22.11, needs more work, although the opening is four and a half months off and therefore another seven or eight weeks of cutting time remains. Scenario #2: It was mutually agreed that the film is note perfect and will be ready in plenty of time to spare, but Luhrman decided it could be even more perfect and persuaded WB to give him more time to finesse and maybe shoot some extra material.

My 5.22 response to the trailer: “This is looking more and more like one of the most intriguing awards-season headliners. The 1920s have been removed from that feeling of veiled sepia antiquity — they feel electric, refreshed, wild. And although the CG still looks a wee bit primitive in the final New York City cut, the idea of glimpsing the Manhattan of 90 years ago has my pulse racing. Plus the actors all seem in fine form.”

My Cinemacon reaction to the Gatsby reel: “The second-biggest attraction during the Warner Bros. Cinemacon presentation was some 3D footage from Baz Luhrman’s The Great Gatsby. I’ve been fearful that Luhrman would smother the Fitzgerald novel under Bazzy bombast. But what I saw felt curiously alive and its own bird — a high-style reboot of classic Fitzgerald that doesn’t feel (at least during the short time it took to screen) the least bit antiquated or borrowed or strained. It’s a 1920s recreation that doesn’t try to do anything except make the characters and the story feel ‘right.'”

The trailer for Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s Zero Dark Thirty (Sony, 12.19) is up, and it’s not that great. I don’t like the guy yelling “when was the last time you saw Bin Laden?” not once but twice. Trailers always cut away context and particularity so this line is probably spoken at the end of an interrogation scene that builds and builds and leads to this explosion. Bottom line: Not bad but not good enough. Sony marketing needs to try again.