In this trailer for Carlo Carlei‘s Romeo and Juliet, Juliet’s “little stars” riff (read by Hailee Steinfeld) is truncated. Let’s presume that the whole passage will be in the film: “And when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night, and pay no worship to the garish sun.” It’s the “garish sun” line that’s missing. Adaptation by Julian Fellowes.

I’ve never seen sharper, cleaner footage from over 100 years ago, ever. Posted two years ago, originally shot around 1900 (partly in Cork, Ireland). Footage was motion stabilized and slowed down to correct speed (from 18 fps to 24 fps), and then upscaled to HD via enchancement software. There are apparently no grain monks among historical film preservationists, but if there were they would probably argue for keeping the naturally faded and jumpy look of old film and against digital enhancements.

For those stalled by Ms. Jackson’s reference to Hogarth, she means William Hogarth (1697 – 1764) — “an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic, and editorial cartoonist. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called ‘modern moral subjects‘. Satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as ‘Hogarthian.'”

Why is it that no one except myself has even mentioned what would seem to any observant person like a somewhat plausible (if not entirely plausible) reason for the vague, sketchy, mostly dialogue-free nature of Terrence Malick‘s To The Wonder? The reason I’m suggesting (apart from the fact that Malick’s natural inclinations are to jettison characters and dialogue) is that he’s a very private fellow, notoriously so, and yet, paradoxically, he very clearly based the narrative bones of To The Wonder on his own personal history, as I pointed out on 8.19.12.

Variety‘s Steven Gaydos commented as follows: “I’m sure this isn’t the first time someone connected the dots between an artist’s obsessive desire for secrecy and privacy in life and their obsessive desire for full-frontal exposure of everything personal and painful and private in their art.”

It just seems queer that not one reviewer has brought this up. Not even as a talking point, not even as gossip…nothing.

From the article: “I’ve heard or read bits and pieces over the years, but a 5.21.11 ‘The Search’ document by Brett McCracken called ‘39 Facts About Terrence Malick‘ reports that in the early 80s, Malick, raised in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, fell for Michele Morette, ‘a Parisienne who lived in his building in Paris and who had a daughter, Alex. After a few years the three of them moved to Austin, Texas. Malick married Michele in 1985, but they divorced in 1998.’ That same year, McCracken writes, “Malick married Alexandra ‘Ecky’ Wallace, an alleged high school sweetheart from his days at St. Stephen’s school in Austin, Texas. They are still married and currently reside in Austin, Texas. Ecky Wallace is the mother of actor Will Wallace, who appears in The Thin Red Line, The New World and The Tree of Life.”

Are you going to stand there and tell me that Neil (Ben Affleck) isn’t Malick, Marina (Olga Kurylenko) isn’t Michele and Jane (Rachel McAdams) isn’t Ecky?

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of wee-hour entrapment when you can’t sleep. It happened this morning around 2:15 am. I awoke on the couch fully dressed with the lights on and the TV blaring. I got up long enough to jettison the externals and kill the lights and flop. Pointlessly. Nothing. if I’ve been through this once I’ve been through it 100 times. The best thing you can do is accept the situation and get up and turn the lights on and start working. At least that way you’re doing something with your time. Instead I watched Peter Bogdanovich‘s Mask, which I haven’t seen in 27 or 28 years. Sleep usually kicks in around 5 or 5:30 am, and that’s what happened this morning. What a drag.

If you’re having a disagreement and asking someone if they’re insane, you can’t be mild-mannered about it. You need to say the word “insane” as if you’ve spent time in a mental ward and know the meaning of the word. You can’t say “insane” like “tomato” or “laundromat” or “Allen wrench.” You need to get into it. One good example is the way Julie Hagerty says “you’re insaaaaane!” to Albert Brooks in the opening scene in Lost in America. You really have to go with the “aaayyne” part. You have to really bray it out.

Weeds costars Demian Bichir and Mary-Louise Parker were given a tribute last night at the Sonoma Int’l Film Festival. A large audience sat in Veteran’s Hall and listened to a spirited q & a, during which Parker wouldn’t stop praising Bichir’s acting gift and especially his Oscar-nominated performance in A Better Life.

(l. to r.) Sonoma Int’l Film Festival honcho Kevin McNeely, Demian Bichir, Mary-Louise Parker following last night’s tribute.

For whatever reason nobody mentioned that roughly five months hence Bichir will begin directing Refugio, a love story that he’s been writing and re-writing for five years. It will shoot in the U.S. and Mexico. His upcoming feature films include Dom Hemingway, Machete Kills and The Heat. He also has a significant role in The Bridge, a 2013 TV series.

A big invitational dinner followed the tribute. I chatted with Demian a bit and said hello to Mary-Louise. I don’t mean to sound uncaring but I wasn’t a fan of the appetizer (a beet dish). By the time the entree began to be served I had to leave to catch a 9 pm screening of Eric Christensen‘s The Cover Story, a doc about the art of ’60s and ’70s album jackets. But thank you, Sonoma Int’l Film Festival, for a very pleasant evening and for your abundant generosity.

The Cover Story was too much to take. I fled at the half-hour mark. It appears to have been made with the assumption that nobody has heard of the super-groups that reigned in the ’60s and ’70s, requiring that their commercial and artistic exploits have to be recited ad infinitum. It’s very tedious. On top of which the narrator speaks in a slick salesman tone that sounds like his main gig is narrating infomercials for potato slicers and cleaning equipment. The deal-breaker was when he recalled the death of John Lennon in the manner of…oh, Wheel of Fortune‘s Pat Sajak?

Those who saw 42 this weekend should watch The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), a mild-mannered biopic in which Robinson played himself. There are more than a few similarities. Go to 23:00 for the scene in which Branch Rickey (Minor Watson) offers Robinson a job with the Dodgers, but only if he “has the strength not to fight back” — roughly the same scene happens in Act One of 42. Not line for line, but close enough.

(l.) Minor Watson as Branch Rickey and (r.) Jackie Robinson as himself in The Jackie Robinson Story.

Brian Helgeland‘s sports drama overperformed with $27 million. Presumably the HE community has some sort of verdict? Too simplistic, on-the-nose and old-fashioned? Or are you on the Marshall Fine side of the fence?

In Nikki Finke‘s 4th box-office update, posted late last night, she notes that audience composition was 48% male, 52% female, and 83% over-25 and 17% under-25. She also reports that 84% saw the film due to “subject matter.” (And the other 16% saw it for the special effects?) The funny part comes when Finke presumably asks a Warner Bros exec how “urban” the audience was, and the exec replies that “while we do not poll race breakdown, I can tell you we performed extremely well in all the large urban markets. But the highest grossing theaters were the country’s most commercial screens.” Are there any highly commercial screens that aren’t in urban-area markets?