Day: August 13, 2015

Hollywood Elsewhere has been sent a few images from the forthcoming Bluray of Universal Home Video’s restored Spartacus (10.6) vs. identical images from the discredited 2010 “shiny” version. The new version, a harvesting of Russell Metty‘s original 70mm Technirama photography, reveals much more detail than the DNR’d “shiny” version, but the only images that really show the difference in Hollywood Elsewhere’s format (460 pixels wide jpegs) are facial closeups. If I can figure some other way to present the differences later on, I will. The more reddish images belong to the 2010 Bluray; the new images are sharper, less forced. Update: I was informed late this afternoon that the restoration specialist on the new restored Spartacus Bluray was in fact Claude Rains in The Invisible Man. Until I hear differently HE’s new Spartacus mantra is “Robert who?” 8.16 Update: I’m informed that the forthcoming Spartacus Bluray shall henceforth be referred to as the “2015 Universal/Harris restoration.”

From 2015 Universal/Harris Spartacus restoration.

From 2010 “shiny” Bluray.

2015 Universal/Harris restoration harvest.

2010 “shiny.”

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I’m thinking twice about attending the 2015 NY Film Festival (9.25 — 10.11). The big NYFF films that won’t have been shown previously — The Walk, Bridge of Spies, Miles Ahead — will most likely be screened concurrently for West Coast press, and missing the rest won’t be immediately fatal. Zero interest, Saw or Ignored in Cannes: Hou Hsiao Hsien‘s The Assassin, Yorgos Lanthimos‘ The Lobster, Apichatpong Weerasethakul‘s Cemetery of Splendour, Nanni Moretti‘s Mia Madre. Telluride/Toronto So What Do I Need New York For?: Michael Moore‘s Where to Invade Next, Nick Hornsby‘s Brooklyn. Marginal interest: Thomas Bidegain‘s Les Cowboys, Michael Almereyda‘s Experimenter, Laura Israel‘s Don’t Blink: Robert Frank, Philippe Garrel’s In the Shadow of Women, Arnaud Desplechin‘s My Golden Days, et. al.

Daniel Barber‘s The Keeping Room (Eagle/Lionsgate, 9.25) “is basically a cabin in the woods horror-violence flick about evil, almost-foaming-at-the-mouth Union soldiers trying to defile and murder three Southern women (Brit Marling, Hailee Steinfeld, Muna Otaru). Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn bought into it but I didn’t. There isn’t the slightest trace of half-sensible motivation or recognizable humanity driving the bad guys (Sam Worthington, Ned Dennehy) — they’re doing the old Jason Voorhees thing with a couple of rapes thrown in plus some personality sauce, period clothing, old rifles and so on. Brit Marling delivers the most substantial performance but that’s almost damning with faint praise in this context. I hate, hate, hate ‘evil’ behavior that lacks a semi-discernible motive. Cut away the art-film pretensions and it’s clear that The Keeping Room is pandering to the slobs who like their exploitation tropes the way low-rent Los Angelenos like their pickles and mayonnaise at Fatburger.” — from a 9.11.14 Toronto Film Festival review.

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How willing am I to buddy up with Bradley Cooper as a hotshot chef trying to make a comeback? I’m honestly not sure. Originally titled Chef, then re-titled to Adam Jones last year to avoid confusion with Jon Favreau’s film of the same title; now it’s called Burnt. Directed by John Wells (August: Osage County) and with an impressive supporting cast — Sienna Miller, Omar Sy, Daniel Bruhl, Emma Thompson, Lily James, Matthew Rhys, Alicia Vikander and Uma Thurman. Opening on 10.23.

“A closer look at the polls shows that Bernie Sanders is simply not within striking distance of winning the nomination,” writes N.Y. Times analyst Nate Cohn in a piece posted today. “His support has run into a wall: women, blacks and Hispanics continue to support Mrs. Clinton by a wide margin, as do white moderate and conservative Democrats.

Sanders, Cohn explains, “has become the favorite of one of the Democratic Party’s most important factions: the overwhelmingly white, progressive left. These voters are plentiful in the well-educated, more secular enclaves where journalists roam. This voting support is enough for him to compete in Iowa; New Hampshire and elsewhere in New England; the Northwest; and many Western caucuses. But it is not a viable electoral coalition in a Democratic Party that is more moderate and diverse” — read: burdened, slow to wake up, not well-read or well-educated — “than his supporters seem to recognize.”

“Yeah, we need to vote for somebody who can appeal to under-informed none-too-brights with little or no college education. That’s what’ll save America! Those damned, deluded educated progressives…what do they know?

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I felt next to nothing last night as I watched Guy Ritchie‘s The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (Warner Bros., 8.7) with a crowd of second-string, all-media loser types at the Arclight. I didn’t “hate” it and I’ll admit that I chuckled two or three times, but I mostly felt anesthetized — suspended in the tepid depths of the thing. The screenplay (written by Ritchie and Lionel Wigram) delivers a form of dry meta-comedy mixed with the same old running-around-Europe action spy stuff, but I have to acknowledge that stylistically and attitudinally it’s up something that’s lightly skewed — an aloof cool-cat vibe that sets it apart from the usual usual. The problem is that this stuff doesn’t kick in very often.

(l. to r.) Alicia Vikander, Army Hammer, Henry Cavill in Guy Ritchie’s The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

About halfway through I was thinking about hitting the head but I talked myself out of it for fear of missing something (a good joke, a clever bit). If you put off a bathroom break it doesn’t mean that a film is necessarily stupendous, but it does suggest it might be doing something half-right.

And yet U.N.C.L.E. is a kind of light genre comedy with a split personality. On one hand it seems to despise action-flick conventions by ironically satirizing them and making dry little jokes, and on the other it subjects the audience to the same formulaic bullshit that you’ve seen in a hundred spy movies.

I was also telling myself that I like Henry Cavill‘s Napoleon Solo. He’s cool to hang with for his good looks and take-it-easy vibe, but mainly because of his droll, meta-blase way of saying his lines. He’s adapting to the basic meta attitude, of course, but I felt relaxed when he was in the room. I also admired Cavill’s performance in Man of Steel, despite having despised the film. I was saying to myself, “We need more guys like Cavill in movies and fewer schlumpies and dumpies.” Cavill just has to be careful to avoid that flirting-with-Ernest-Borgnine look that he exhibited last year at ComicCon.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. contains three scenes that exude an amusingly detached “humor” element. The quotes mean “not exactly funny but enough to make you grin slightly.”

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