Day: November 21, 2016

I finally sat down and really watched Criterion’s One-Eyed Jacks Bluray (which was created by Universal Home Video and The Film Foundation under the watchful eyes of Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg). While wearing my recently bought blue-tint bifocals, I mean. Which make Blurays on my 65″ Sony 4K look much sharper than I had previously suspected was possible. 

So let me tell you and speaking as one who saw this restored version of Marlon Brando‘s 1961 film projected in the Salle Bazin at the Cannes Film Festival, the Criterion Bluray is so ripe and robust it’s almost surreal — crisp and clean and needle-sharp beyond belief. It’s a VistaVision color bath you can just sink into. It caresses your eyeballs. I’m guessing it looks way, way better than it did on opening day at Loews’ Capitol on 3.30.61.

Side issue: Movies starring actors on the short side never announce this. In just about every film that’s ever starred a not-tall guy, and particularly in the case of action films or westerns, the lead actor’s short stature is always camoflauged to some extent. And yet when it came to casting two guys that his character would beat up, director-star Marlon Brando chose actors who were significantly taller and bulkier than he — Slim Pickens and Timothy Carey. And when those beating scenes happen, it looks a little strange for this much shorter guy to be whipping these big-ass guys. It doesn’t stop the film, but it seems odd.

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During the last third of Manchester By The Sea, Patrick Chandler (Lucas Hedges) visits the home of his estranged, recovering-alcoholic mom (Gretchen Mol) and her Christian boyfriend Rodney (Matthew Broderick). Soon after Patrick receives an email from Rodney, the content of which I won’t go into but which basically says “your mother is a fragile soul who needs more time to get used to things,” etc.

As Patrick reads the email director-writer Kenneth Lonergan shows us a couple of shots of the text, and in the third or fourth paragraph (which nobody in the world will ever look at but which I spotted the last time I saw the film) Broderick uses the word “privilege” in some context or another.

Except Broderick — Lonergan, I should say — spells it with an “a” — privalege. Unless it was an honest spelling error on Lonergan’s part (which I strongly doubt), this is Lonergan suggesting that Broderick’s character is less wise and disciplined than he seems, and that he probably hasn’t been graced with an elegant, first-rate education. A man who knows his Bible and believes in the healing power of Jesus, but who lives in his little bubble (as, God knows, all too many liberals do, which SNL satirized last weekend). A decent man but limited in certain ways, and perhaps intentionally so.

All of this, I swear, is contained in that one misspelled word.

The suggestion is that a fellow who doesn’t know how to spell privilege (or who isn’t careful enough to use spell-check after writing a letter) is not only under-educated but is perhaps a little reluctant to know the world more than he already does. Rodney likes the realm that he lives in , and if that means he’ll occasionally mis-spell a word, so be it.

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For some reason the Key West Film Festival booked my return flight from Key West to Los Angeles by way of Charlotte, North Carolina. I was at Charlotte-Douglas Int’ Airport for about 90 minutes last evening, and as I made my way to the departing gate I noticed a row of white rocking chairs along a longish corridor. And I said to myself, “Wow…that’s a nice touch. I wish I had time to sit in one of those chairs for five or ten and just be at peace for a bit.” But I didn’t. Because that’s how I live my life for the most part. I’m not really a rocking-chair type of guy, but I love the concept. I’m actually thinking of buying a rocking chair for my living room now.

An Eric Kohn Indiewire piece reports that Steve Bannon, the Lucifer-like alt-rightist who became the honcho of Donald Trump‘s presidential campaign last August and who will become Trump’s chief strategist and senior counselor as of 1.20.17, worked in indie film distribution in 2004 and ’05.

Bannon’s company, American Vantage Media Corp., bought Wellspring Media in ’04, which led to his overseeing distribution of (a) Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation (a critically admired, low-budget gay-identity film that was made for next to nothing with loads and loads of found footage), (b) Vincent Gallo’s The Brown Bunny (notorious for that Chloe Sevigny blowjob scene, and directed by a fellow Republican!), Todd Solondz’s Palindromes (which I never saw as I kind of hate Solondz, no offense) and Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark.

Which of these four films would arouse President-elect Trump’s interest the most, presuming he hasn’t seen any of them? Three guesses and the first two don’t count.

Kohn also reports the somewhat embarassing information that Bannon worked in ’04 and ’05 with Cinetic Marketing’s Ryan Werner as well as The Orchard’s Dan Goldberg, whom I was just hanging with last weekend with at the Key West Film Festival. The seeming horror of the association! But no one should look askance at these poor guys for being strange bedfellows with Bannon 11 and 12 years ago. One has to maintain a sense of humor about such things. Back then Bannon, who split his time between New York and Santa Monica, was politically obliged to go along with the indie mindset. Now he’s about to become a modern-day “Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors,” as Bannon described himself in a recent Hollywood Reporter interview.