Day: July 13, 2013

For years I’ve been describing black-and-white Blurays with over-abundant grain as covered in a swarm of billions of silver digital mosquitoes, a.k.a., a pigshit “grainstorm.” I was obviously describing an unwelcome experience. But in his review of the Criterion Bluray of John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds, the last great Frankenheimer film of the ’60s and a kind of adult horror film about a futile attempt to escape from the conformist nightmares of that era, DVD Beaver’s Gary W. Tooze, an outspoken fan of grain, uses my insect-swarm terminology to describe a pleasurable viewing experience. Mindblowing! The lizard eating its own tail and calling it foie gras!

Hell Baby is apparently aiming to be an unabashed celebration of fecal, rancid, sinking-into-the-cultural-slimehole comic values. How fucking stupid do you have to to be to laugh at this kind of imbecilic crap? Special offer for opening-night attendees: If you can squeeze out three loud, super-stinky farts in rapid succession (i.e., within three minutes) you’ll get the cost of your own ticket plus that of your plus-one fully refunded. Theatre ushers will be standing by to verify.

With all the Mad Men hosannahs of the last few years it’s strange that no one has ever recalled that the great Mad magazine ran an amusing musical parody piece in 1960 or thereabouts, right when Don Draper and his Sterling Cooper colleagues were establishing a beachhead. Based on Lerner and Leowe’s My Fair Lady, “My Fair Adman” was a dryly cynical comment about Madison Avenue values in which Cary Grant was more or less Henry Higgins, Charles Laughton played a version of Colonel Pickering and Frank Sinatra was Eliza Doolittle (i.e., “Irving Mallion,” a Greenwich Village beatnik with a beret and a Van Dyke).

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I’ve said it 18 or 19 times if I’ve said it once — I’m a huge fan of Guillermo del Toro‘s art when he’s not cranking out a big fat franchise-for-the-morons movie, when he tones it down and reins it in and tries the old subtle-sell approach. The Devil’s Backbone is a sterling example of this and one of his greatest — would that GDT went to this kind of well more often.

If you’ve never tripped with a truly shallow, egocentric asshole, you need to see Sebastian Silva‘s Crystal Fairy (Magnolia, now playing). That sounds like I’m pissing on it, but I’m not. I was actually moderately taken with this little film and not in the least bit sorry I saw it. And I came away with newfound respect for Michael Cera, who shows serious balls in playing one of the most insensitive dipshits in movie history — an almost entirely annoying 20something Ugly American, nowhere and clueless and unable to see a single millimeter beyond his own tedious “here’s what I want” bullshit.

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Last night I attended a 7 pm showing of Michelangelo Antonioni‘s L’Avventura at the Film Forum, and once again I had the same reaction that I always have whenever I see a newly restored film there — “This?” It looked fine but it didn’t blow me away, and I know when I see the Bluray version I’ll probably be knocked flat. Honestly? What I saw last night looked no better than the 2001 Criterion DVD version on my 50″ Vizio.

But Greta Gerwig was there, sitting all alone in the 10th or 11th row. We talked a bit after the show. She’s thoroughly spellbound by Monica Vitti‘s performance, she said. Like me, she’s seen L’Avventura six or seven times. This is what women of extraordinary character and cinematic devotion do — they slip into revival screenings of classic films on a Friday night without a boyfriend and certainly without an entourage.

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Warner Home Video’s Shane Bluray comes out on 8.13, or a little more than four weeks hence. I was so turned on by the exquisitely restored, digitally projected version shown on a big screen during last April’s TCM Classic Film Festival that I asked WHV publicity vp Ronnee Sass if any other big-screen invitational showings are planned for late July or early August. She said something was being “worked on” but no details at this point. Whether showings happen in New York or Los Angeles or both, all ardent fans of this legendary 1953 film need to attend with bells on. The likelihood of a perfect-looking Shane being shown in tip-top condition again is not high.