Remember when the bald-headed Matt Damon was taped having an impassioned debate with libertarian TV journalist Michelle Fields under a tent in Washington, D.C.? That was in August 2011 and Neil Blomkamp‘s Elysium, for which he had shaved his head, won’t be out until 8.9.13. That’s a lohhhnnnng post-production period.

Part Two of John McElwee’s Greenbriar Pictureshow piece on “The Shane Showdown” appeared this morning. The conclusion reads as follows:

“I understand now that Woody Allen has spoken to the Shane matter in a letter to Hollywood Elsewhere‘s Jeffrey Wells, the latter crusading for several weeks in favor of the film’s Bluray release in full-frame. Greenbriar is in agreement with Mr. Wells, as well as archivists Bob Furmanek and Robert Harris. The latter two are also on record for Shane in 1.37, and have done research to back their positions. Furmanek and Harris are lifelong historians and gilt-edged reliable.

“My own past with Shane amounts to stills/ad art collected, and a banged-up 16mm syndication print treasured from summer 1975 for being IB Technicolor, making its wear and splices tolerable. I would sure have hated losing blue skies from that, and like it or no, sky is part (but only part) of what we will lose if Shane goes out in cropped format. Given that outcome, lots will be crying “Come Back, Shane!” to discarded DVD, laser-discs, VHS, and for myself, that worn 16mm having rode off years ago to a collector who’s luckier than I’ll be once this proposed Bluray comes out.”

Anyone looking to join me in picketing the 1.27 screening of the 1.66 Shane at the TCL Chinese at 6:30 pm needs to meet me at 5:30 pm at a soon-to-be-designated location. I will provide the picket signs. I will also see to whatever permit is required.

The above-mentioned conclusion to John McElwee’s Greenbriar Pictureshow piece on “The Shane Showdown” asks what director George Stevens publicly said about the 1.66 presentations of his film, which was shot between July and October of 1951 at 1.37. Any public statements Stevens may have made are, of course, immaterial. He shot the film at 1.37, period. Anything Stevens said in the wake of Shane‘s April 1953 release can be read as mere political tainted, given his natural interest in wanting Shane to be a commercial success and not wanting to throw any spitballs at Paramont.

Nonetheless McElwee offers a Stevens quote from a 5/8/53 edition of Variety. “New screens to stimulate and hold audience interest must have height as well as width,” Stevens said, adding that “it’s wishful thinking and nothing more to look at the large screen and see in it the miracle that will cure [a given] film’s problems.”

McElwee also offers a 5.3.53 comment on the two versions of Shane from N.Y. Times critic Bosley Crowther, the first seen at a private screening room and the second at the Radio City Music Hall:

“Let’s not be secretive about it,” Crowther wrote. “Shane on the Music Hall’s large screen looks not one whit better to this viewer than it did on the screen of a preview room. For purposes of comparison, we caught the film first in a preview where its handsome display of western drama filled the whole end wall of the small room. And then we saw it in the theatre, where the ratio of the screen was slightly changed — not quite as tall as usual in proportion to the width — and we’ve got to confess the grandeur of it was slighter, if anything.

“Does the moderate enlargement of the screen and the slight alteration of its aspect ratio really do anything to improve the pictorial magnificence and dramatic qualities of such a fine film as Shane?,” Crowther asked. “It is the opinion of this viewer, based on studious observation, that it does not. If anything, the fractional narrowing of the shape of the screen cuts it down. Many of its separate compositions are in the up-and-down vertical plane — just as many are in the horizontal — so the post-imposed narrowing of the frame detracts just that much from the harmony of the vertical image.”

A little before or after 9:30 this morning a loud explosion was heard in my neighborhood. And then the power was gone. Phonetically it was somewhere between a “whank!” and a “whump!” My first thought was either a serious car crash or an Iraqi terrorist exploding an IED. It turned out to be an exploding transformer or juncture box about a block away, or right next to the Urth Caffe. SCE trucks and cop cars and fire trucks soon descended. I’m now filing this from a nearby Starbucks.

First, who cares about DVD boxsets these days? Second, of all the films Cary Grant made over his 72-film career I Was a Male War Bride, People Will Talk, Monkey Business, An Affair to Remember, Kiss Them for Me and Born To Be Bad are easily among the least entertaining. And third, a p.r. release received this morning states that Grant “never played the role of the villain.”

Uhhm, nope. Grant very definitely played the villain in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Suspicion. The finale of the original script (by Samson Raphaelson and Joan Harrison) called for Grant’s Johnny Aysgarth character to give the poisoned drink to Joan Fontaine‘s Lina and for Lina, resigned and depressed, to drink it. But before dying she gives Johnny a letter to post — a letter to friends in which she declares that Johnny has killed her. It was only a last-minute rewrite that led Hitchcock to shoot the phony-baloney ending in which Johnny confesses his sins and abruptly reforms.

I collapsed in helpless giggling when I saw this clip from This Is The End (Sony, 6.12). People tend to laugh when a joke or bit reflects a basic shared insight about real life — they laugh out of recognition, hah-hah, “that’s the way it is, all right!” Obviously Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg‘s film is saying that name-brand Hollywood actors embrace the same elitist values as Rhode Island Republicans. Can you think of anything funnier off the top of your head? I’m on the verge of blacking out here.

I was invited by Sony publicity to a special midday preview of footage from Neil Blomkamp‘s Elysium (Sony, 8.9). I rsvp’ed right away to the emailed invite but when I clicked through on my iPhone it led to an image of some dorky moron that told me to tilt the phone, blah blah. I’ve no patience with apps that don’t reveal information simply and instantly so I ignored it after that. I drove down to Sony Studios at 11:30 am today only to be told that the event was being held at Hollywood’s Arclight. Terrific.

I hate iPhone apps that don’t do what they’re supposed to do. “Why didn’t you guys just put the basic information on the initial email instead of asking people to click through on some slow-moving app that doesn’t work?”, I asked when I realized my error. Then I got philosophical about it. Today’s event just didn’t have my name on it — that’s all.

Synopsis: “In the year 2159 two classes of people exist: the very wealthy who live on a pristine man-made space station called Elysium, and the rest, who live on an overpopulated, ruined Earth. Secretary Rhodes (Jodie Foster), a hard line government official will stop at nothing to enforce anti-immigration laws and preserve the luxurious lifestyle of the citizens of Elysium. That doesn’t stop the people of Earth from trying to get in, by any means they can. When unlucky Max (Matt Damon) is backed into a corner, he agrees to take on a daunting mission that if successful will not only save his life, but could bring equality to these polarized worlds.”

A week ago a Behind The Candelabra teaser went up. Here’s the first full-boat trailer for Steven Soderbergh‘s biopic, which HBO will premiere on 5.26. It doesn’t matter if Matt Damon sounds like Scott Thorson, but it does matter what Michael Douglas‘s Liberace sounds like. Liberace spoke with a certain sing-songy tone and a hint of a lisp — like a typical glammy gay guy of the ’50s and ’60s. It doesn’t sound as if Douglas is making much of an attempt in that regard.

Here’s hoping again that Behind The Candelabra turns up at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off exactly five weeks from now.

Thorson played Liberace’s Rolls Royce chauffeur in his Las Vegas stage show. Liberace mentions him about halfway through the clip:

It’s hard to think of any actress-celebrity who seemed to represent the vapidly self-absorbed, pre-progressive-social-consciousness era of the ’50s and early ’60s more profoundly than Annette Funicello, the ex-Mousketeer and AIP Beach Blanket Bingo queen who has died at age 70. I guess Shelley Fabares and Connie Francis were just as “bad” in this regard, and I guess you can’t really “blame” Funicello for projecting all that puerility and making all those AIP beach movies with Frankie Avalon.

I’m not talking about Ms. Funicello herself, of course, but what she performed and sold as a “brand.” Put on the headphones and listen to “Tall Paul“, and then marvel at how Funicello’s mentality co-existed in the ’50s and ’60s with that of, say, Joni Mitchell‘s. Funicello projected such naivete and a lack of any kind of fire. Francis, at least, could sing “and I like it fine” in the plastic-pop hit “Stupid Cupid“, but even that, I suspect, was beyond Funicello’s reach.

That aside I’m sorry for the sadness being felt right now by Funicello’s friends, family, loved ones.

This just in from Block-Korenbrot, passing along a note from her children Gina, Jacky and Jason: “We are so sorry to lose mother. She is no longer suffering anymore and is now dancing in heaven. We love and will miss her terribly.”

You can recite all those Iron Lady incantations until you’re blue in the face. For me one of the most revealing Margaret Thatcher quotes is her allusion to Francis Bacon as “that man who paints those dreadful pictures.” That, to me, almost says it all. Any person who has made it in a tough world has a little Maggie Thatcher in him/her, and on that level I feel a certain kinship and respect. But let’s not get carried away with that.

Where would Thatcher’s reputation be without Meryl Streep?

The Real McCoy brought a lot of pain into a lot of people’s lives. Ask the Brits who lived through her time at 10 Downing Street. Ask Elvis Costello. You can argue that pain is inevitable in life and that too many Brits were slacking off and throwing down pints at the pub before she came along. You can argue that what truly matters in life is mustering the toughness and discipline to meet the challenges. But the bottom line is that Ms. Thatcher was an essentially heartless social Darwinian who, like Ronald Reagan, believed in stroking the elite.

It’s not the clothing…well, yes, it’s the clothing, of course, but it’s the atmosphere inside Bergdorf Goodman‘s that people particularly love. It feels incredibly flush, pampered, protected, perfect. But I hate it when sales people grin almost lasciviously at me and say, “Can I help you?” Or, much worse, when they stand nearby as I try something on. I always turn to them and smile and say, “Sorry but I think this is between me and the jacket.”

Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s opens via eOne on May 3rd.

You don’t have to be empty to love shopping or browsing at Bergdorf’s, but some of the worst wealthy people in the world can be found there every day. Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorfs and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee — an ideal pairing at Quentin Tarantino‘s Beverly Cinema.

“If you clothes are not at that place, they have no future. There’s no future, those clothes. Sorry.” — Isaac Mizrahi.

“I had hoped that even on such a subject as [gay relationships and marriage], where passions run high, the internet was a forum where ideas could be freely discussed without descending into name-calling. I believe that is what it could be, but it depends on all of us behaving, even behind our aliases, in a humane, intelligent and open way.” — Final paragraph in Jeremy Irons’ mea culpa following his father-son incest comment during a recent Huffington Post interview.