Year: 2015

A couple of days ago I bought the recently released Masters of Cinema Paper Moon Bluray. Some of it is too grainy, too halo’ed…bothersome. But it still has Tatum O’Neal‘s Oscar-winning performance as Addie Pray. Like so many younger characters in so many parent-child movies made since Paper Moon, she’s much shrewder and in some ways even more mature than Ryan O’Neal‘s Mose. The best Bible-selling clip is after the jump. In fact, the scene with the widow and her five or six daughters is probably the best in the film.

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Aubrey Morris, who played Mr. Deltoid in Stanley Kubrick‘s A Clockwork Orange, has passed at age 89. He had only two scenes in that 1971 classic — warning Malcolm McDowell‘s Alex to stay out of trouble in that needling, smarmy voice of his with many of his sentences ending in “yes,” and then informing “little” Alex during a police station grilling that the cat lady had died and that he’d therefore become a murderer.  I don’t recall any of Morris’s other performances, not a one. Whatever he said or did in If It’s Tuesday, It Must be Belgium, I’m drawing a blank. Nor do I remember him in The Wicker Man. Kubrick used to say to his actors, “Realistic is good, but interesting is better.” Morris is remembered and respected today because he followed this advice.

Friendly memo to Boston Herald critic Jim Verniere: What’s with the deliberately slowed-down reading of the copy? No offense but it sounds spazzy. Best quote: “Trainwreck could be this generation’s When Aaron Met Amy.”

Underwhelming and in many ways tedious, Woody Allen‘s Irrational Man (Sony Pictures Classics, opening today) is Match Point‘s slower, less engaging brother. One of the things I’ll always savor about Match Point is how perfect the last ten minutes are — they amount to one of his all-time best endings. And one of the things I’ll never forget about Irrational Man is how unsatisfying the finale feels. Leaden, dispiriting — it makes you feel bitter and abandoned.

After catching it at last May’s Cannes Film Festival I noted that “the most striking thing about it is Joaquin Phoenix‘s pot belly. I fully recognized the familiar, dissolute, older-guy malaise that his college professor character is suffering from during the first 40 minutes or so (which the gut is supposed to be a metaphor for, I presume), but nothing Phoenix says or does during the entire film has a chance against that mound of pudding hanging over his belt. It’s stand-back huge. He looks pregnant.

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“I judge comedy harder than probably any other genre. To keep me consistently laughing takes a lot of hard work, and a lot of comedies nowadays don’t like to try all that hard, throwing stuff to the wind they aren’t terribly committed to and hoping it sticks. So when a comedy with a focused, specific voice comes along that has me laughing from start to finish, I am a happy guy. Addicted to Fresno, from director Jamie Babbit and writer Karey Dornetto, managed to do that. It’s not a comedic masterpiece. I don’t want to overstate it. But it certainly is a funny 90 minutes that gives costars Judy Greer and Natasha Lyonne a lot of things to play with.” — from Mike Shutt‘s Rope of Silicon review, posted from SXSW on 3.18.15.

The horse-riding tracking shot at the very end of this just-popped Revenant trailer is fantastic — the stuff of instant cinematic legend. Well, the whole trailer is but what a finale! And that rhythmic exhaling alternating with the drum beat. All hail Emmanuel Lubezki (his 70mm-like photography was captured in 6K digital by the Alexa 65) and Alejandro G. Inarritu, and let’s start the talk…I was going to say start the Leonardo DiCaprio-for-Best Actor conversation but based upon what? (I need to control myself.) Naturally I’d love to see The Revenant have its big worldwide debut in Telluride but I’m guessing it’ll start to screen in late October or early November…something like that.

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The VistaVision fanfare image on top is composed at 1.85…no problem. The clip below is/was composed at 1.66 in 1954. The clip below that (third down) is composed at 1.85. The three static images at the bottom [after the jump] are, in this order, 1.42 (call it 1.37), 1.66 and 1.75. A 1.85 VistaVision fascist sees only the top and third-placed image and rejects the rest as heresy. I am merely suggesting that the second from the last image is more pleasing to the eye, and that the last image is the second most pleasing….that’s all.

1.85:1

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I’ve watched this trailer twice, and it seems obvious that Tom Hardy is grand-slamming it here. Shake hands with a pair of genetically linked fellows who are nonetheless somewhat different physically and also separated by temperament and outlook (i.e., one being half-crazy). He’s probably a lock for Best Actor — this is stunt casting and high-wire performing on a level that’ll be hard to dismiss. I’d really like to see this play Venice + Telluride but who knows? If I was Universal marketing honcho Michael Moses and Uni Oscar consultant Tony Angelotti I’d be taking Legend to both festivals plus Toronto to make it clear that Hardy’s performance demands award-season attention.

It took me a long time to recover from my various childhood traumas, first and foremost being the son of an alcoholic dad. Another was always being ordered to bed too early in my pre-tweener years. Even during the summer months with the sun not fully down for the count until 9 or 9:30 pm I would be sent to bed at 8 or 8:30 pm. Looking out at the dusk-lit neighborhood street from my bedroom window and listening to kids still playing outside was infuriating. The only time I was allowed to stay up later was when I stayed with my paternal grandparents, who were much more liberal. I swore up and down I would stay up as late as possible when I got older, and that’s still the case today. I can’t bring myself to hit the sack until midnight or thereabouts, even if I’m exhausted. The idea of going to bed early is generally intolerable. I’d say this is 60% or 70% due to my Harrison Avenue repression plus standard FOMO. It also spawned a determination to err on the side of liberalness when it came to my own kids. Even when they were really young I’d let them stay up until midnight on weekends. All because of Jim and Nancy and their belief in a Gulag Archipelago environment.

Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon‘s Best of Enemies (Magnolia), one of the year’s finest docs and one of my hands-down faves during last January’s Sundance Film Festival, will open on 7.15. On one level a spry, highly intelligent history of the ABC TV debates between William F. Buckley, Jr. and Gore Vidal during the Democratic and Republic national conventions of ’68. On another level a capturing of a time and a pre-Fox News political climate that no longer exists — even with the police riot on the Chicago streets and the acrimony that eventually engulfed Buckley when he lost his temper and called Vidal a “queer”, the summer of ’68 was nonetheless a time of relative civility when it came to right-left disputes. And yet the debates were also a harbinger of the culture wars that began…when, during the Nixon administration? I’m hoping to see this again and sit down with Neville (director of the Oscar-winning 20 Feet From Stardom) before it opens.

In yesterday’s piece about the intention of Universal and Martin Scorsese‘s The Film Foundation to join forces on a 4K “restoration” of One Eyed Jacks, I stated that the only acceptable aspect ratio for the resulting Bluray will be 1.66:1. I explained that 8-perf VistaVision, which was Paramount’s “house” process during the burgeoning widescreen days of the mid 1950s, delivered an in-camera aspect ratio of 1.5:1 but was mastered in 1.66:1 from the mid to late ’50s. Others disagreed, claiming the a.r. should be 1.85. This is pure Furmanek, pure fascist reflex. I will maintain to my dying day that 1.85 is too radical for 1950s and early ’60s films — it chops off too much information.

Default full-aperture VistaVision aspect ratio: 1.5:1.

1.66:1.

1.85:1.

Above, to prove my point, are three images from Cecil B. DeMille‘s The Ten Commandments, which was shot in VistaVision. The top image shows the full image capture, which is roughly 1.5:1. Notice that Sir Cedric Hardwicke‘s sandaled feet are sitting on top of what looks like a plain wooden box or platform of some kind — obviously not meant to be seen. The second or middle image is a crop I’ve done at an a.r. of 1.66:1. Notice that I’ve gotten rid of the box but with a bit more breathing room above Yul Brynner and Charlton Heston‘s heads. It’s pleasing and airy and not overly cramped. (And without distractions like Hardwicke’s foot rest, most of the 1.66 framings would be much more balanced.) The bottom image, cropped at 1.85, is from the finished film. Notice the lack of breathing room, a cramped feeling. It almost looks like the characters don’t have enough oxygen.

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