Month: December 2015

Even with money to burn in my sleep I would feel badly about forking over $8 grand for Haier Asia’s R2-D2 moving refrigerator. If I was loaded I might cough up a grand for something like this but $8K? (Does JJ Abrams have one in his Bad Robot complex?) Much of the cost of the Haier unit, which was profiled yesterday by cnet.com) has to do with a) Lucasfilm licensing fees, (b) the mobility factor (it travels around 1km per hour) and (c) the 720p HD digital projection capability (“Help me, Obiwan Kenobi — I need a brewski”). The unit will be on display during January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (1.6 thru 1.9).

My first thought was to wait until Stars Wars: The Force Awakens had at least played for a full 12-hour day, but obviously the Thursday night surge was huge so have at it — the forum is open. Most of the responses have been fairly euphoric, but the Thursday nighters are devoted believers and therefore easy lays. I’ll be listening more closely to the Friday and Saturday night crowds, and especially those with the character to cool their jets, bide their time and wait until Sunday. Here’s a Newsday video that was posted last night.

The good…okay, the interesting news is that Criterion will release a digitally restored Bluray based on a 4K harvest of John Frankenheimer‘s The Manchurian Candidate (’62) on 3.15.16. The bad news is that they’ve decided to chop the aspect ratio down to 1.75, which will deliver a bit less height than the 1.66 that’s been the home video standard for many years.

Would it do any good to say I’ve seen Candidate projected at 1.66:1 and that it looks beautiful that way? I can’t swear to it, but I recall that the MGM/UA laser disc of Candidate had a 1.66 a.r., and I know for an absolute damn fact that 1.66 was used for the MGM/UA laser disc of Frankenheimer’s The Train.

More height is always right. How does it add to The Manchurian Candidate‘s visual allure to slice off a portion of the top of the image? I’ve never understood this sick impulse and I don’t want to understand it. Perverse and inexplicable.

Yes, I might buy the Criterion version but only because I love the design of the cover jacket. Is there really going to be a substantive image-quality difference between the ’04 Bluray and the Criterion? Maybe if you have an 80″ or 100″ screen but I wonder if I’m really going to see a whopping difference on my 60″ Samsung.

Did anyone like or even see Jared Hess‘s Don Verdean, which popped 12.11 on VOD? I caught it 11 months ago at Sundance ’15 and said the following (and yes, I know I’ve posted this a couple of times since): “I wanted to at least quietly enjoy this satire of rightwing religious foolery and fraudulence. But it just wouldn’t let me go there, and I’m saying this as a fan of Sam Rockwell, who plays the titular character — a bullshit archeologist and discoverer of Biblical relics. The only good thing is New Zealand-based actor-comedian Jermaine Clement, who plays Boaz, a corruptible Israeli guide.” Costarring Amy Ryan, Leslie Bibb, Will Forte and the demonic Danny McBride. Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) directed and co-wrote somebody from his family with the first name of “Jerusha.”

Tina Fey‘s performance as a war correspondent in Glenn Ficarra and John Requa‘s Whiskey Tango Foxtrot appears to be something outside her usual realm. The “journalistic dramedy” is based on Kim Barker‘s 2011 memoir “The Taliban Shuffle,” which chronicled her journalism adventures in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Then again pic’s approach has been described as “semi-fictionalized” — i.e., Barker’s tale shoehorned into a Tina Fey movie or a relatively honest adaptation with Fey-like humor and attitude thrown in…pick. I’m paying $30 something for Gogo in-flight wifi access and I can’t even snag the trailer’s embed code.

Right now I’m doing the old LAX-to-JFK Virgin America suffering thing. Seat 8C, aisle. 4:46 pm Eastern and another two and a half hours to go — ETA 7:30 pm. And then the real fun starts wth luggage carousel, Air Train, subways, lugging bags up steep steps, etc. You know what reduces the ennui of flying? Percocet. A friend sold me a few last night.

In a 12.17 Hollywood Reporter round-table discussion moderated by Stephen Galloway and Matthew Belloni and titled “Amy Schumer, Aaron Sorkin and Four More Top Scribes on Sexism and How to Deal With Steve Jobs’ Widow,” Schumer talks about last February’s Schumergate episode: “The things that you’re afraid they’re going to say are so much worse than anything they actually say. But you’ve already put your nervous system through that fear.

“With Trainwreck coming out, I was like, ‘Everyone’s going to say she’s not pretty enough to be in this movie.’ And then only one dude wrote that, and people really attacked him, and then he redacted that and wanted to date me. I’ve been waiting for this rainstorm of hate, and it’s never really come.”

Schumer isn’t far off but what I felt was more of a spiritual kinship thing. Her Trainwreck performance melted me down, and I became a total fan. As I wrote last July, “I was persuaded that the movie version of ‘Amy’ is who Schumer really is deep down, and that realization touched me like very few comedies have in my entire life. I’ll never say a word against her again.” And for expressing this I was called a phpny and a liar.

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Yesterday afternoon I pulled into the WeHo Gelson’s (Santa Monica & Kings Road) and hung a right and then a left. There were two idling cars in their parking spots, youngish women at both wheels, presumably looking to exit but opposite each other and apparently concerned about who should go first. So neither moved. An old guy behind me honked and yelled “c’mon!” Then the woman closest to me (late 20s, brunette, new car) lurched slightly backward and then stopped, apparently worried about not having enough room behind her. But she was fine — all she had to do was back up and then turn and go. She was obviously the churchmouse type so I reversed two or three feet to give her more space. The old guy didn’t like this and honked again. But the woman still sat there. She turned in her seat and looked at me. Another honk. I got out and walked over to her vehicle (the window was rolled down) and said, “Want some help? I can guide you out.” Woman: “Can you back up a bit?” Me: “I’ve already backed up and there’s a guy honking behind me. You’ve got plenty of room. You can do it…really.” She sighed and frowned and then VERY slowly began to back out. It took her a good two minutes so make it into the middle lane and leave. I could offer a gender generalization but I’d just get into trouble on Twitter again. But try to imagine a self-respecting dude causing a Gelson’s logjam like this.

Steven Soderbergh at peak strength. My kind of L.A. action flick, my kind of father-daughter film, my kind of half-and-halfer (revenge flick, dark comedy), my kind of Peter Fonda movie, my kind of director-screenwriter (Soderbergh, Lem Dobbs) audio commentary track…one of the most exquisitely right, droll, socially resonant crime films ever made, and an all-time upgrader of The Hollies’ “King Midas In Reverse.” I’m sorry but one Limey is worth at least…I can’t decide on the less-good film but it’s worth at least ten of it.

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Late Wednesday afternoon 112 motion picture scores were announced by the Academy as eligible to win the Best Musical Score Oscar, and of course the one score I’ve been really and truly knocked out by — Ryuichi Sakamoto‘s sparely applied, solemn string music for Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s The Revenant — didn’t qualify. That’s because Sakamoto wasn’t the only composer on the film (he was joined by Bryce Dessner and Alva Noto), and Academy rules state that a score “assembled from the music of more than one composer shall not be eligible.” Oscars for original and adapted screenplays are sometimes handed to co-writers but the music branch insists on sole authorship. This is the second disqualification for a musical score composed by more than one person for an Inarritu film. Last year Antonio Sanchez‘s all-percussion score for Birdman was disqualified because portions of classical music were also used in addition to Sanchez’s drumming. Here’s a sample of Sakamoto’s Revenant score.