Last night I attended my third screening of Pablo Larrain‘s brilliant No, which has to be nominated for the Best Foreign Feature Oscar. And then I hit the Flight after-party in an Academy-owned outdoor space on Delongpre, just south of the Arclight parking structure. Denzel Washington attended the premiere but not the party. But I spoke to director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriter John Gatins, and chatted with numerous others.
Flight director Robert Zemeckis told me that a Bluray of Used Cars will be issued before too long. Great film, great news.
My feeling about the Vertigo Bluray is that it’s mildly problematic but generally not too bad, and in many ways quite tasty and delicious. It gets a pass. Restoration guru Robert Harris, who photo-chemically restored Vertigo into 70mm elements back in ’96, has also seen the Vertigo Bluray. His remarks, posted today at Home Theatre Forum, make it plain that he is not altogether delighted. But at the same time he’s giving it a reasonably good grade — a 4 out of 5 on image, and a 4.5 out of 5 on audio.
Key quote: “The bottom line here is that almost all of the film looks and sounds terrific.”
Harris says that I will be pleased as James Stewart‘s suit “is properly brown, and not aubergine.” I respectfully but firmly disagree. As I wrote yesterday, Stewart wears a “mood suit that sometimes drifts into faint aubergine brown, depending on the source of light. The suit is solid brown in sunlight or shaded-sunlight scenes and aubergine-tinted when he’s indoors.”
“What most of you want to know is if there are major problems,” Harris writes. “Is the Bluray of Vertigo perfect? No. Is it horribly problematic? Absolutely not.
“Toward full transparency, I will offer than I’ve been pleased to have been consulted on the project, and I firmly believe that within financial parameters, Universal has taken the project as far as it can go. The technical execs at Universal very much want this, and the rest of the Hitchcock Bluray collection to be as perfect as possible. But in the corporate world, things aren’t always as easy as just doing it. Budgets, and financial realities must come to the fore.
“Generally, any sequences that are fully exposed have been dealt with via digital color, and the final results are superb. That accounts for probably 90% of the film.
“The problems are in dupes — the shot in the museum, going from Kim Novak‘s hair to the portrait — the color of which is incorrect, and, without further technical support, uncorrectable. And in faded shots. Several shots of Mr. Stewart and the police officer on the rooftop in the opening don’t answer back color-wise, and could have. A thin sequence in Barbara Bel Geddes‘ car needs help.
“A single problematic shot of Mr. Stewart at Carlotta’s grave after his release from the hospital, exhibits extreme fade at the top of the frame. For our version, without digital tools, we were forced to go to separations, which ran out of register.
“The ride to the mission at the end of the film, has problems with black levels and skin tones, and as handled, there is no way it could not.
“Probably the most problematic are the final interior shots in the mission tower, again with poor black levels and improper flesh tones. Apparent fade across the center of the negative, also yields an unpleasant transparency to the sequence.
“I was considering posting frames to show what the Bluray should look like as opposed to what it does, but I see neither the need nor anything positive coming out of it. My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that Universal tried very hard to make this right. They agreed to take suggestions until after the end, and I have nothing but respect for the final result.”
My first response to Bill Desowitz‘s James Bond Unmasked was “what in particular has been masked about the Bond series, or about the actors who’ve played him over the last 50 years? Haven’t they all spoken out at one time or another, and with a fair amount of candor?”
But after reading his interviews with all six Bond guys — Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig — a satisfying sense of summation or completion kicks in. A finality as far as it goes. The gang’s all here. Has anyone spoken to all six and put them together in a single volume?
Desowitz and I spoke a day or two ago, or just after seeing Skyfall at the Grove. We covered most of the basics, the lore, the stories. Connery, Lazenby, Moore, etc. (I even mentioned my visit with Moore on the Pinewood Studios set of For Your Eyes Only.) Here’s the mp3.
It took Desowitz ten years to interview everyone and write it just so, proofread, pull the art together and so on. He’s been telling me about it for a long while. I was sent a copy a few weeks back, but I didn’t start reading until Skyfall was fast approaching.
Desowitz spoke to Connery on the set of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, or about ten years ago. He reports that Connery, normally unenthused about discussing the Bond series and evasive for the most part, was in a receptive frame of mind because it mentally took him away from the frustration and unhappiness of working on Gentlemen, and particularly under director Stephen Norrington. A ten year-old interview obviously can’t be called fresh or new, but has Connery spoken to anyone about Bond since?
Framing-wise nothing gives me more pleasure than extra headroom and legroom. So it’s pleasing to know that the IMAX version of Skyfall (opening a day before the 11.9 general release version) will offer 26% more information than the 2.39 to 1 image that I saw two nights ago at the Grove, and which will be shown in non-IMAX theatres nationwide. It looks like something between 1.37 and 1.66.
2.39 to 1 general-release framing.
4 x 3 IMAX framing.
Skyfall opens in several overseas territories on Friday, 10.26, and in several more countries a week later. United States ticket-buyers won’t be the last to see it, but they’re almost at the end of the line.
“We shot 2.35 but because of the size of the chip, you’ve got so much space top and bottom that basically I shot it for both formats,” Roger Deakins recently toldBill Desowitz. “There are one or two shots where I had to put a dolly track in or maybe there’s a boom in shot. But the IMAX was clean and the image quality is fantastic because you’re using the full size of the chip. So I had seen a lot of tests and was blown away by the IMAX. We did a 4K finish and it’s down rez’d to 2K after that. It quite surprised me, the fantastic quality.”
Until Lewis Beale reminded me this morning about Curtis Hanson‘s Chasing Mavericks (20th Century Fox/Walden Media, 10.26), I hadn’t paid the slightest attention. It wasn’t even a blip, although I’m told that an LA screening may happen tomorrow. It’s unfair to generalize, but by today’s yardstick the more “inspirational” a sports drama seems to be the worse it probably is. I think I could live with never seeing another film about a young, starry-eyed athlete looking to capture a dream ever again.
Obviously this story of late surfing legend Jay Moriarity (who died just before his 23rd birthday on 6.15.01) didn’t pan out. And it reps a hard-luck episode for Hanson (L.A. Confidential, Wonder Boys, 8 Mile, In Her Shoes, Too Big To Fail) as he was unable to complete directing chores due to heart troubles. Michael Apted oversaw the last two weeks of filming.
The trailer tells us some of the inspirational lines spoken by Gerard Butler‘s Frosty Hesson character (and written by Kario Salem) are agony. I can’t understand how Hanson, who knows from good dialogue, didn’t refine or rewrite or just toss them out.
The only surfing dramas I’ve felt anything for were John Milius‘s Big Wednesday, Kathryn Bigelow‘s Point Break and John Stockwell‘s Blue Crush.
Why did Moriarity have to have five syllables in his last name? Why couldn’t he settle for four? Four was good enough for Drew McWeeeny when he was known as “Moriarty.” People don’t like five-syllable last names.
Can a case made for a growing suspicion that any film costarring Butler is either bad or underwhelming or minor or cursed? Gamer, Law Abiding Citizen, The Bounty Hunter, Machine Gun Preacher, Playing For Keeps, Movie 43…all negligible.
An apparently non-professional critic named David Claytonwrote the following on Rotten Tomatoes:
“All these surfing films are the same — deep philosophy & respect for the waves, spectacular footage as boards & surfers race inside massive walls of water, but the story is landlocked & caught up in simplistic, melodramatic plot devices. This one’s based on a true story & the performances by leads Gerard Butler & John Weston are fine. I just wish the conventional romance, dealing with daddy issues, bullies & an alcoholic mother were skipped over since they leaden the plot with very predictable outcomes. I did enjoy the 90’s soundtrack (haven’t heard Butthole Surfers & Mazzy Star in a long while!), but coming from acclaimed directors Curtis Hanson & Michael Apted, I hoped for so much more.”
From the Wiki page: “Born in Georgia in 1978, Jay Moriarity and his family moved to Santa Cruz, California, soon after his birth. His father was a Green Beret parachutist and a surfer, who introduced his son to surfing when he was 9 years-old. He immediately took to surfing and quickly became a respected surfer in Santa Cruz. Not limited to either a shortboard or a longboard, he was known as a versatile surfer who appreciated all aspects of surfing. This appreciation was rooted in an overall love for the ocean, seen in his accomplishments as a swimmer, paddler, diver, and fisherman.
“Achieving success in surfing as a youngster, he became increasingly interested in surfing Mavericks, north of Santa Cruz in Half Moon Bay. After intense physical and mental training with his mentor and close friend and Mavericks regular Frosty Hesson, he began surfing Mavericks at 16 years of age, and soon became a respected regular in the line-up.
“In 2001, Moriarity co-authored a book with Chris Gallagher entitled, The Ultimate Guide to Surfing.
“Moriarity died a day before his 23 birthday on June 15, 2001, in the Indian Ocean off the coast of the island Lohifushi in the Maldives, drowning in an apparent diving accident. In Lohifushi for an O’Neill photo shoot, he went free-diving alone but was not seen after. A search party recovered his body late Friday night. Moriarity left behind his wife Kim Moriarity.”
“Every one of us, every person here, every human life presents a negotiation between public and private identity,” Cloud Atlas co-director Lana Wachowski said four days ago (10.20) in San Francisco during a speech at a Human Rights Campaign fundraiser. “Invisibility is indivisible from visibility; for the transgender this is not simply a philosophical conundrum — it can be the difference between life and death.
“Years later I find the courage to admit that I am transgender, and this doesn’t mean that I am unlovable.
“A few short weeks ago after my coming out, the three of us — Tom Hanks, Andy and I — were being interviewed, one of the reporters ventured away from the subject of the film towards my gender. Imagine that, a reporter. My brother quickly stepped in [and said], ‘Look, just so we’re clear…if somebody asks something or says something about my sister that I don’t like, understand that I will break a bottle over their head.'”
That’s Andy for you! He’s the blunt-spoken one, the “aahh, fuck this” guy, the blurter, the Wachowski who’s impatient with bullshit in any form.
This is all very moving. It’s a very good story to tell and to hear. But would Lana, who (along with Andy) had been living a media-averse, media-intimidated, Thomas Pynchon– or Terrence Malick-styled life for the last 12 or 13 years, have told it if she didn’t have a movie to sell? Probably not.
It’s always crass and callow when a film-junket interviewer or reporter tries to steer a film conversation toward the realm of tabloid revelation, but it says something about the island that Lana lives on that she would say “imagine that” about a reporter doing this.
This wasn’t just an emotionally moving speech but a highly significant one from a major artist. The Hollywood Reporterwaited four days to post a video and a transcript of Lana Wachowski’s remarks because they had it slotted as an 11.2 magazine piece (which is weird), but why didn’t somebody else run with it earlier? Or did I miss something?
I still didn’t care for the portion of Cloud Atlas that I was able to force myself to watch in Toronto. It would be through, professional and responsible of me to see the whole thing, but I’m not looking forward to doing that.
I despise Brightcove embed codes. If I could eradicate these codes from existence by saying a prayer and clapping my hands three times, I would say a prayer and clap my hands three times. I won’t post them because they always screw everything up on the site.
“Over the last few years America has been knocked down,” Clint Eastwood‘s new Romney ad begins. He doesn’t mention that the financial meltdown of 2008 was largely brought to us by a rightist corporate takeover of this country, facilitated by the Wall Street deregulation under Bush (and yes, by Clinton also). The fair-deal, free-enterprise America that Clint grew up in has become a South American-style patriarchal society in which a tiny elite live like pampered sultans while everyone else scrimps — a social scheme authored by Republican scum.
Clint’s solution? American needs to go more corporate, more white bread, more Republican.
