Year: 2018

Sometime in 2019 a slightly more explicit version of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Psycho will reportedly be offered by a German video distributor, either as a Bluray or streaming file or whatever. Nothing breathtaking is included — it’s just a tad more explicit than the prudish U.S. cut.

Apparently this version, which almost shows a little Janet Leigh sideboob in the Bates Motel peep scene, was sent to Germany some 58 years ago. The German cut also shows a bewigged Anthony Perkins stabbing Martin Balsam three times, or twice more than in the U.S. version. There’s also some bathroom clean-up footage that’s slightly more specific.

Here’s a 2012 article about the extra German footage.

Universal Home Video should issue a new Psycho Bluray with this footage, of course, but they should also (a) remaster it in 4K and (b) offer an alternate boxy version (1.37:1) — the current Universal Bluray slices off acres and acres of visual information with an unnecessary 1.85 aspect ratio.

In 50 words or less, please explain the core reason for the apparently insatiable appetite for deadpan graphic horror among millennials. Why the endless fascination with rage, blood spatterings and psychotic brutality on one hand, and a relatively unenthusiastic attitude about elevated horror (i.e., The Witch, Hereditary, The Babadook), which people like me tend to favor.

HE theory: Two and a half years ago I posted a piece titled “Where Are Angry, Despairing Millenial Dramas?” The idea was that millennials have as much reason to feel despair and anger as England’s kitchen-sink dramatists and filmmakers did in the late ’50s and early ’60s. But they’re not watching or making many films that portray or echo their experience. Theatrically they’re into FX-driven superhero films, dumbshit comedies, horror, etc.

Perhaps on some level horror films are, in their heads, a kind of metaphorical kitchen-sink realm. I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, but maybe.

“Dunk on Me,” a two-week-old music video by the New York-area band Blood Cultures, is an example of non-elevated horror, to put it mildly. “Dark, brooding electro-pop…combining equal parts psychedelic textures and dance-worthy beats…the music produced is as murky and obscure as its creator’s true identity.” — NME.

I’ve long regarded Karina Longworth‘s You Must Remember This as the most soothingly intelligent podcast of its type. Old Hollywood excursions, I mean. Soft-spoken but frank, sifting through historical sands, mildly sassy, hitting the refresh button, analysis and perspective, etc. It gives you a kind of Percocet with hot herbal tea feeling.

I was going to settle into her latest, a piece about Yvonne DeCarlo and a portrait of Howard Hughes as the original #MeToo predator, but reading Sophie Gilbert‘s Atlantic profile persuaded me to dive in this evening.

Excerpt: “Since Longworth started podcasting in 2014, You Must Remember This has found a cult following. Part old-timey radio show, part reportorial deep dive, it picks lovingly at the stars in the Old Hollywood firmament.

“Longworth has brought a new perspective to some of the most overexposed stories and characters in film history, producing chronicles that incorporate her narration and research with fragments of actors reproducing real dialogue. But she’s also introduced a new generation of cinephiles to less-enduring actors like Linda Darnell and Olive Thomas, giving credence to women whose talent and biographies were buried. With an academic’s approach to research and a critic’s eye for quality, Longworth interrogates Old Hollywood: its myths, its icons, its injustices.

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Legendary award-season event maestro Peggy Siegal threw a Green Book luncheon today at Bice Cucina (62 W. 55th Street). The whole gang was there — director Peter Farrelly, Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali, costar Joe Cortese, co-screenwriter Brian Hayes Currie, musical score composer Kris Bowers, producer John Sloss. Plus a lot of familiar journalistic faces — Roger Friedman, Michael Musto, Stephen Schaefer, Bill McCuddy, etc.

This morning I posted the frankest and most concise summary of Green Book I’ve ever read, heard or crafted in my own head: “It’s a smoothly finessed period cocktail that washes all the Trumpian toxicity right out of your system.”

Crabby critics like Bob Strauss can snort and harumph and roll their eyes all they want, but that’s exactly what this perfectly crafted neck-massage film does. Just because it feels “old-fashioned” (i.e., it could’ve been made 20 or 30 years ago) doesn’t mean it’s not the cat’s meow for all the right reasons.

It’s also, I feel, one of the most effective love stories I’ve ever opened myself up to since…well, a long while. For a couple of hours, at least, it makes you feel imbued and soothed about human nature. Does that feeling gradually soften and fuzz out when you emerge from the screening room? Well, yeah, but what doesn’t? Plus you can always watch it again. I’ve seen Green Book three times now.

The Universal release opens on 11.16.

(l. to r.) Green Book director-cowriter Peter Farrelly, co-screenwriter Nick Vallalonga, Mahershala Ali, Viggo Mortensen, co-screenwriter Brian Hayes Curry.

Green Book music composer Kris Bowers, who did a beautiful job. Like all great scores, it (a) watches the movie along with you, and (b) takes good care of you.

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Based on reports about Matty Libatique‘s altercation last night in Poland, it would appear that the renowned cinematagpapher has an alcohol issue.

As one who embraced sobriety six and a half years ago, I understand that no one can step in and save a drunk from self-destructing — the drunk has to man up and do it himself (or herself). I also believe this episode shouldn’t have any effect upon Academy voting for the Best Cinematography Oscar. Libatique’s lensing of A Star Is Born is (or at least was) arguably in contention for this honor. If the work merits a nomination then it merits a nomination — period.

Nonetheless Indiewire is reporting that Polish prosecutors have charged Libatique with “assaulting public officials, which is punishable by a prison sentence of up to three years under Polish law.”

If Libatique had been arrested for assault against a wife or girlfriend, he’d be in deep shit right now with the #MeToo Robespierres. Thank God he only clobbered a Polish medical worker and a couple of cops — small potatoes.

A New York “Intelligencer” piece by Sasha Issenberg (“Maybe It’s Time For America To Split Up?“) has taken a serious look at cutting the red states loose and creating a sensible, solid-blue America that wouldn’t be hindered by racist bumblefuck obstinacy — an old HE fantasy. The difference is that Issenberg is envisioning a three-federation system — Blue, Red and Neutral.

In a 3.15.13 riff titled “Common Knowledge,” I wrote that “the best thing that could happen all around would be to create a separate nation among the Midwestern and Southern areas of this country — just cut the yokels off and let them raise their own revenues and nurture their retro beliefs, values and prejudices. They’re just a drag on the rest of the country and the sooner Red America is cut loose, the better for the rest of us. Seriously.

“This isn’t the 1860s. Our borders are secure, we have nuclear weapons, and nobody’s going to invade. We can be two countries and make out just fine. Yugoslavia broke up into two or three chunks and they’re doing okay. Czechoslovakia became two nations and they’re holding it together. We could create our out Czech Republic — a Blue America — and let the ‘Slovakians’ have their own. I’m perfectly serious here. Get rid of the dumbshits and a lot of the nation’s big problems will become much more managable.”

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Originally posted on 4.6.12: In her review of George Roy Hill‘s The Sting, Pauline Kael asked, “What is this movie about anyway?” Answer: Emotional comfort in the form of assured professional craft. It’s about conning people into caring about a shallow story with no themes or subcurrents whatsoever. It’s about keeping them intrigued even though the good-guy con artists have the upper hand all the way.

The Chicago Limited poker-game scene is the most satisfyingly shot and performed scene of its type in Hollywood history because it’s not about poker, but about two cheats trying to out-fuck each other. Paul Newman‘s smug and rascally confidence is key, but the whole thing really depends upon Robert Shaw‘s seething rage — the scene wouldn’t play without it. It’s all about boiling blood.

I can watch this scene all day long and never get bored because it’s perfectly shot, acted, lighted and timed. It’s the kind of thing that big-studio movies used to do really well. The emphasis was just so.

In 2008 director Rob Cohen (The Fast and The Furious) told the following story to reporter Germain Lussier of the Times Herald, a Hudson Valley newspaper:

“I was a reader for 100 bucks a week for a big agent named Mike Medavoy, who went on to be a studio head and producer,” Cohen began. “Mike put me in this cubbyhole and they hadn’t had a reader in about a month and the backup was enormous in this agency because I was reading scripts for all the agents. So I was in this little cubbyhole piled floor to ceiling with unread scripts and I began to develop a little code unto myself. Like ‘I will never read two scripts in a row with yellow covers.’ Or ‘On Wednesday, I only read scripts with blue covers.’

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A feisty, blunt-spoken, deeply moral director, Spike Lee carved his own path, spoke with his own voice and put Fort Greene, Brooklyn on the world map. I still say his best film is, was and always will be Malcolm X. Yes, he’ll be greatly missed, but what’s surprising — okay, shocking — is how he managed to hoodwink the Hollywood community as well as the ticket-buying public for over 35 years as to his true identity. All this time we thought he was “Spike Lee” when in fact he was a kind of Bruce Wayne or Clark Kent. Not to mention the fact that all this time he was 34 years older than he claimed. Shape-shifter, artful dodger.

Peter Farrelly‘s Green Book (Universal 11.16) had its big Manhattan premiere Tuesday night at the Paris, and then threw itself an elegant, lavishly catered after-party inside the Plaza’s Oak Bar. Farrelly, costars Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen, producers Jim Burke and John Sloss, Universal brass (Ron Meyer, Michael Moses), etc. Everyone was feeling the same bubbly champagne buzz when it ended. Great reviews, bullseye performances, perfectly written and edited, feelgood vibes, all-but-locked Oscar noms for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Screenplay, etc. The only concern is that Green Book isn’t tracking all that well, but awareness will explode once the word gets around — a week or two to ignite, and then it’ll keep playing and playing.

Green Book‘s Mahershala Ali, heavily favored to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his deliciously precise, emotionally affecting performance as the late jazz pianist Don Shirley, and Blackfilm’s Wilson Morales at Oak Bar after-party — Tuesday, 11.13, 10:10 pm.

(l.) Green Book and The Descendants producer and current Focus Features production president Jim Burke, Green Book star Viggo Mortensen.

Cinetic Media’s John Sloss (r.), son Henry Sloss (center) and significant other Bronwyn Cosgrave. Cinetic is one of the production companies behind Green Book.

Drop into a local time tunnel and consider the merits of six popular, well-reviewed 1995 films: Mel Gibson‘s Braveheart, Ron Howard‘s Apollo 13, Michael Mann‘s Heat, George Miller‘s Babe, Michael Radford and Massimo Troisi‘s Il Postino, Ang Lee‘s Sense and Sensibility.

23 years later, which of these is commonly regarded as the finest of the lot? As one of the greatest films of the ’90s? As one of the coolest, most stylish, most memorable and geographically distinct films of the 20th Century? And as the 1995 film with the greatest performances, both in the lead and supporting categories?

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I’m a little ashamed of what I’m about to reveal, but I just want it understood that I only meant to cast a little sunlight on a dire situation. You can say to me “that’s one of the dumbest things you could have possibly said in that situation” and I wouldn’t argue with you, but I was only trying to offer some positive spin. In this instance “positive” was inextricably linked with the term “idiotic,” agreed, but we all make little verbal mistakes from time to time.

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