Variety and the N.Y. Times reported this afternoon that Twentieth Century Fox is developing a film about the Supreme Court’s recent marriage-equality ruling. Fox has acquired the life rights of Jim Obergefell, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit that went to the court. To cover their bases the studio has also bought life rights to Obergefell’s attorney Al Gerhardstein.

On 6.26 The Onion ran a piece about such a project, beginning with the following:

“WASHINGTON — Shortly after turning in dissenting opinions in landmark federal rulings today that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act and conferred full federal benefits to married same-sex couples, Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John G. Roberts and Samuel Alito reportedly realized today that they would someday be portrayed as villains in an Oscar-winning film about the fight for marriage equality.

“’Oh, God, the major social ramifications, the political intrigue, all the important people involved in the case — I’m going to be played by some sinister character actor in a drama with tons of award buzz, aren’t I?” said Scalia, joining his fellow dissenting justices in realizing they would be antagonists in a film potentially titled Defense Of Marriage and probably written by Tony Kushner.

A new Star Wars prequel about a young Han Solo is being worked on by LEGO Movie directors Christopher Miller and Phil Lord. A screenplay has reportedly been co-written by Lawrence Kasdan and his son Jon and…what, Miller and Lord are re-writing?. And Solo will be played by whom? Chris Pratt or some young buck trying to be the next Pratt? Flick will allegedly tell “the story of how the young Han Solo became the smuggler and thief who Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi first encountered in the cantina at Mos Eisley and shot Greedo,” blah blah. That obviously removes any chance of Harrison Ford filling the role, which is what everyone would rather see happen…right? Screw all prequels. Pic will open on 5.25.18.

I felt mostly sympathy and compassion for Hillary Clinton during this afternoon’s 18 and 1/2 minute interview, which was conducted by CNN’s Brianna Keilar. Clinton will never knock anyone out in a one-on-one, but she’s okay. She’s trying to say the right things, strike the right balance…and I suppose she’s doing a reasonably good job of that. As far as she’s able, I mean. It’s just not in her to charm or inspire. She doesn’t come off as brittle or peevish here, but as someone who could go there at the drop of a hat. She blew off any suggestions that her trust numbers are to some extent her fault, and she dodged Keilar’s question about shutting down the Clinton Foundation if she’s elected. I believe she’ll be a good, tough, capable president — a slightly flintier Obama with the same right-center philosophy. I don’t believe for a second that she’ll do much to try and reverse the pattern of income inequality, certainly not in the populist way that Bernie Sanders has pledged to do. I believe that Hillary’s warmer and more personable up close than she seems in these interviews, but she’ll never be a great campaigner. She just doesn’t have it.

I’m, like, not the target demo for movies like Paper Towns, which is an adaptation of a YA book by John Green, author of “The Fault In Our Stars.” (I didn’t “like” the 2014 film version that much, but I didn’t obsessively hate it either — it drained me.) To go by reviews, Towns is a teen-angled dramedy about love and obsession with a kind of mystery element (i.e., where’d she go?). I’m 85% certain I’ll hate it, but you have to focus on that 15% potential. You have to take things as they come.

But I also have to be clear and say that my primary animus is, in this instance, not adaptations of YA novels as much as Nat Wolff, an obviously live-wired and nimble-witted actor (as well the 20 year-old son of thirtysomething costar Polly Draper) who plays the male lead.

Over the last four or five years, Wolff has costarred in a series of passable, tolerable, mildly acceptable and in some cases achingly sincere relationship films — New Year’s Eve, Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding, Stuck in Love, Admission, Palo Alto, Behaving Badly, Grandma — about people who are hurting or insufficiently loved or turned around in some way. Most of these films have made me feel irked or unhappy or otherwise unsatisfied, and so I’ve passed them on to Wolff. The dissatisfaction is his fault, his doing. Kidding but on a certain level not. I saw his face on the poster and went “oh, Christ.”

The aspect ratio of Hou Hsiao-hsien‘s The Assassin is, to judge by the trailer, something close to 1.37:1. And yet the credit block in Justin Chang‘s review describes it as “partial Academy ratio.” I’m informed that the film is mostly in 1.85 and that only the first five minutes uses a somewhat boxier (1.37 or thereabouts) aspect ratio.

It doesn’t take much to get me to riff (or re-riff) on Michael Tolkin’s The Rapture. The 7.5 posting of a Trailers From Hell commentary on the 1991 film by Tolkin will more than suffice. To expand upon the headline, The Rapture is not just the greatest anti-Christian nutter film of all time but the spiritual father of HBO’s The Leftovers and generally one of the creepiest non-horror films over made.

Posted on 5.20.11:

“The Rapture weirded me out on a level that I didn’t fully comprehend at first. So much so that I’ve only watched it twice. It’s not what you’d call a ‘pleasant’ film, but it sinks in and spreads a strange malevolent vibe — a profound unease, disquiet — into your system.

I almost never order steak at a restaurant and I never buy it at the market. But once or twice a year I’ll enjoy a well-prepared chop of some kind. A filmmaker friend serves scrumptious meats when he throws backyard barbecues. I had a superb steak in Buenos Aires once. And I’ll admit my mouth always waters a bit whenever I drive by a traditional steak restaurant. I’m nonetheless averse for three reasons: (1) I’m basically a fish, vegetable and fruit kind of guy, (2) I’ve watched a certain cow-slaughter video a couple of times and (3) the livestock industry is pretty bad for the environment. I’m nonetheless interested in seeing Franck Ribiere‘s Steak (R)evolution (Kino Lorber, 7.17 NYC, 8.28 elsewhere). The Hollywood Reporter‘s Jordan Mintzer liked it well enough, calling it “an absorbing, and often enlightening, quest for the world’s greatest sirloin.” Mintzer reviewed a 130-minute version that opened in France last year; the Kino Lorber cut runs 110 minutes. It’s not surprising that the doc “conspicuously leaves out the slaughterhouse,” as Mintzer notes, but dodging this obviously indicates a lack of integrity. Honestly? If steer meat was to suddenly vanish from the menu I wouldn’t be horribly upset. You know who would be upset? Pie-eating guys like Quentin Tarantino. Vincent Vega to Mia: “C’mon, kitty cat, let’s go get a steak.”

Earlier today the Associated Press reported that Bill “While You Were Sleeping” Cosby testified in 2005 that he bought quaaludes to give to women he intended to have sex with. Tonight a pair of Cosby’s victims, Barbara Bowman and Joan Tarshis, told CNN’s Don Lemon that the report is a “game changer” and “huge.” In a personal vindication sense, they presumably meant, as there’s no way for Bowman or Tarshis to nail Cosby legally with the statute of limitations having expired long ago. “I’m feeling really great…I never thought this day would happen,” said Tarshis, who first posted her rape allegations against Cosby in an 11.16.14 essay on this site.

Nearly six months after a euphoric Sundance debut, Douglas Tirola’s Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story Of The National Lampoon has been acquired by Magnolia Pictures, presumably for release this year. The doc was hands down one of the best assembled, most entertaining, totally wowser films I saw at Sundance last January. And it’s about something that nearly everyone understands or identifies with to some degree, which is the seed and birth of anarchic, counter-conventional, ultra-outlandish comedy, which everybody takes for granted today but was an entirely new thing when it popped out of the National Lampoon in 1970. So it’s really quite the cultural landmark in a sense. I was thinking it would sell immediately when I saw it in Park City last January. What was the hold-up? I’m guessing that John Sloss‘s Cinetic Media was looking for terms that distributors couldn’t accept and so there was a months-long Mexican standoff…something like that. All Sloss would say was that “sometimes the right deals take a long time to fit together.”

A little more than five years ago Universal Home Video released their infamous “shiny” Bluray of Stanley Kubrick‘s Spartacus. The transfer by Jim Hardy’s HTV/Illuminate looked sharp and crisp but overly sweetened; too much of the detail captured by Russell Metty‘s 70mm Technirama photgraphy had been lost. In an online review restoration guru Robert Harris, who reassembled and restored a definitive 184-minute version of this epic film in 1991, called the 2010 50th Anniversary Bluray “an ugly and unfortunate bit of home video fodder,” suggested a recall, and called for a “new image harvest.”

Well, Harris has been working on such a harvest for about a year (the project was revealed last March by The Digital Bits‘ Bill Hunt) and a brand-new, presumably more specific and film-like Spartacus Bluray will pop sometime in the fall. A day or two hence I’m hoping to speak with Harris in some detail about the 4K restoration and maybe post some before-and-after comparisons.

Excerpt from 6.1.10 HE review of “shiny” Spartacus: “There’s no question that the Spartacus Bluray has been scrubbed down. Last night I put my face about 15 inches away from my 42″ plasma and studied Jean Simmons‘ face during one of the first-act closeups, and it’s like she’s wearing too much base — not the flesh-covered stuff you buy in pharmacies, but the digital kind that washes away organic sincerity. So yes — Harris is right. The Spartacus Bluray is, technically speaking, high-end vandalism. It should be recalled and done right.

“There’s just one problem. If you step back from the screen — sit three or four feet away, I mean — the Spartacus Bluray looks way better than the Criterion DVD or the laser disc or any other version that I’ve ever seen. For the first time since seeing Harris’s restored print on a big screen, I felt dazzled by some of the images. I was saying to my son Dylan, ‘I’m not supposed to like this but whoa…look at that!’

The legendary, respected, always colorful Jerry Weintraub has passed at age 77. Music industry manager (Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, John Denver, Neil Diamond, Led Zepplin), film producer (Weintraub Entertainment Group), chairman and CEO of United Artists. He knew everybody, got around, saw everything, knew all the stories — a real 20th Century showbiz guy. Part of Weintraub’s panache is that he always sounded like he was vaguely mobbed up on some level, or that he knew guys who knew guys who knew guys. He wasn’t just a Jew who was born in Brooklyn and raised in The Bronx — in a highly flavorable way he really sounded like it. (One result was that director Sydney Pollack hired him to play a gangster in The Firm.) I never spoke to Weintraub much (parties, press conferences), but I loved his smooth old-school swagger. A smart, shrewd, aggressive dude. Did well for himself, made money for others, played the game with consummate skill. Douglas McGrath‘s My Way (2011) is streaming as we speak on HBO

I’ve been putting off facing the truth about Bill Pohlad‘s Love & Mercy, which is that it’s underperforming. This despite two award-worthy performances (Paul Dano and John Cusack), great reviews and notions that it’s probably the most Best Picture–worthy 2015 release so far. After four weeks in a maximum of 481 theatres, the Roadside Attractions release has earned only $10.5 million, which feels anemic to me.  It’s still playing at five L.A. plexes but the juice appears to be just about spent.

The Love & Mercy gang at 2014 Toronto Film Festival premiere screening.

I realize that indie-ish, character-driven dramas are always marginal performers but I was figuring (hoping?) that Love & Mercy would nudge its way into the high teens or even the low 20s before stalling out, and then maybe bounce back on home video when award season happens (top-ten lists, critic trophies, Oscar and Golden Globe nominations, Spirit Awards). But to barely break $10 million…wow.

This seems to indicate that the core audience for Love & Mercy, mature quality-seekers and Beach Boys fans, are relatively few in number. That or a lot of these viewers simply decided to wait for the film to start streaming. Why didn’t it catch on a bit more? Was it because of the darkish mood and (let’s be honest) the somewhat sluggish pace in the film’s second half? Is it because only boomers are interested and under-40s couldn’t care less? I know that my son Jett, 27, and his girlfriend Cait saw it early and liked it a lot, and that when they got home they both did a lot of googling about Brian Wilson, etc.