Yesterday I found a yellow, dog-eared copy of the November 1979 issue of The Thousand Eyes Cinema Guide. Only three or four issues were published before the wily and colorful Sid Geffen, publisher of this TV Guide-like publication and operator of the then-thriving Bleecker Street and Carnegie Hall Cinemas, pulled the plug.

I served as the tireless managing editor and even, for a brief while, as the advertising guy. It was a great publishing experience while it lasted, but also grueling as hell because all 60 pages had to be written, edited, re-edited, copy-corrected, pasted and re-pasted by hand. With adhesive and Exacto knives. It took two or three days, two all-nighters and 85 cups of shitty coffee to finish the job at a composition-and-print house north of the city.

Yep, there really were 21 repertory cinemas (or venues) operating in Manhattan at the time. And yes, there was a certain musty romance to the analog, 27″ x 41″ display poster, reel-changing celluloid movie world of 1979. But for lovers of classic. indie, foreign or weird cinema, things are much better today in so many respects. Choices, image quality, ease of access…everything.

Over the years many actors and performers have ducked out of sight for a year or two (Robert Downey, Jr., Dave Chappelle, Winona Ryder, Eminem, Britney Spears), but as far as I can recall only three big-time movie stars absented the screen for several years — Henry Fonda, who vacated after 1949’s Jigsaw and didn’t re-appear until 1955’s Mister Roberts, Dustin Hoffman (Tootsie to Ishtar) and Al Pacino, who disappeared between Revolution (’85) and Sea of Love (’89).

Who am I forgetting? Contenders don’t measure up to Fonda, Hoffman and Pacino unless they were a big star when they dropped out, and they had to stay away from movies at least three or four years.

Warren Beatty doesn’t count. His post-Reds career has mostly been about not pulling the trigger.

Pacino was technically vapor for three and three-quarter years with Revolution opening in December ’85 and Sea of Love debuting in September ’89, but you might as well call it four. The legend is that the moody and whimsical New Yorker was lost and depressed, or maybe he was just charging his batteries. But however you slice it Pacino was a movie ghost all through ’86, ’87, ’88 and most of ’89.

But once he finally returned, Pacino made history with the best decade of his career and indeed his life. Nine grandslam performances in ten years — Dick Tracy (Big Boy Caprice), Glengarry Glen Ross (Ricky Roma), Scent of a Woman (Colonel Frank Slade), Carlito’s Way (Carlito Brigante), Heat (Lt. Vincent Hanna), Donnie Brasco (Lefty), The Devil’s Advocate (John Milton/Satan), The Insider (Lowell Bergman) and Any Given Sunday (Tony D’Amato).

[Thanks to Robert “Kid Notorious” for nudging me about Hoffman.]

A digital 4K restored version of Lawrence of Arabia played last weekend at the Bedford Playhouse. It was only the second time that this super-luscious, extra-detailed version (sourced from Grover Crisp‘s 8K scan) had been shown to an east coast audience — the first time was six years ago under the aegis of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Original Lawrence restorer Robert Harris, who introduced the Bedford screening, told me this morning it’s the finest looking version he’s ever seen, including any and all 70mm presentations.

The Bedford Playhouse has a 37-foot wide screen. Sony delivered the film on two DCPs. If only I’d had the time and scratch to fly back and attend. I’m told that the 4K version has screened out here, but I’ve never heard of any such showings.

You can stream the 4K Lawrence via Amazon, of course, but as good as it looks you’re not really getting the full whack. 4K streaming delivers something like 2.6K, depending on the breaks — only physical media can deliver the full visual boatload. High-end connoisseurs have been pleading for a 4K Lawrence Bluray for years, but the market for 4K Blurays is flat, limited and possibly sinking, as we all know. Believe or not, 45% of physical media enthusiasts STILL watch films on DVD.

Last year a European audio-reference site, avcesar.com, reports that Sony will deliver a 4K Lawrence disc sometime this year**. Here’s hoping.

** The site also reports that Warner Home Entertainment will deliver 4k Blurays of Heat and Wyler’s Ben-Hur in 2019.

With Alex Ross Perry‘s Her Smell opening this weekend, a repost of my 9.17.18 N.Y. Film festival review:

“Her Smell is an audience-test movie — a kind of experiment to see how much in the way of undisciplined, pull-out-the-stops abuse viewers are willing to sit through.

“The tools of this abuse are wielded by Perry and star Elizabeth Moss, who gets to snarl and smile demonically and be all manic-crazy obnoxious as Becky Something, an edgy, drug-fueled grunge rocker (pic is set in the ’90s) who wears too much eye makeup and suggestively flicks her tongue and could stand to lose a few pounds. Five minutes with crazy Becky and you’re immediately plotting your escape. She’s Medusa-woman, lemme outta here, can’t do this…aagghh!

“Escaping wasn’t an actual option, of course, as I sitting in a New York Film Festival press screening at the Walter Reade theatre, surrounded by dozens of critics. If I’d bolted I would have never heard the end of it so I stuck it out like a man, but good God almighty.

“There’s one tolerable moment in the last third. I’m reluctant to use the term ‘third act’ as there’s no story in Her Smell, much less anything resembling story tension, although there are five chapters or sections, each announced by snippets of 1.37:1 footage. The moment I’m speaking of shows a sober Becky sitting down at the piano and gently singing Bryan Adam‘s ‘Heaven’ to her toddler daughter. Hollywood Elsewhere is very grateful to Perry for at least offering this small slice of comfort pie. Peons like myself (i.e., viewers who are unable to enjoy a film teeming with jabbering, wall-to-wall, motor-mouthed anxiety) need this kind of thing from time to time.

“85% to 90% of Her Smell is about enduring Becky’s rash, needling, abrasive behavior toward her bandmates (Agyness Deyn, Gayle Rankin), a trio of up-and-coming Seattle chick musicians (Cara Delevigne, Dylan Gelula, Ashley Benson), her ex-husband (dull-as-dishwater Dan Stevens), the record-label owner (Eric Stoltz, 56 during filming and eyeballing the big six-oh) and some kind of manager-agent character (Virginia Madsen, who was born only 20 days before Stoltz). They all regard Becky with the same expression, a non-verbal channelling of “oh, God…she’s gone over the edge…what can be done?” and so on.

“To sum up, Her Smell is Perry punishment. And an indulgent, highly undisciplined, 135-minute exercise in flamboyant behavior-acting for Moss. I will never, ever see it again.”

Random thoughts: (a) What is that, Wadi Rum again?; (b) Here we go again…more money, more legend-spinning, more earnest expressions; (b) I don’t get the leaping backwards into an oncoming bad-guy star fighter; (c) How come Oscar Isaac has no close-up?; (d) Nobody hates C3PO more than myself; (e) when, if ever, will Hollywood Elsewhere embark on a Lawrence of Arabia camel trip that will include camping in Wadi Rum for a couple of days?

HE to J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson: Luke Skywalker lives within the realm of The Force, but is otherwise dead. Rey is the inheritor but not his daughter or any immediate blood relation. (Or did I miss something?) There are no other Skywalker descendants, no Skywalker army, no Skywalker cult or tribe.

So what the hell does “The Rise of Skywalker” mean?

If it means Kylo Ren (grandson on Darth Vader) is going to turn from the Dark Side and became a last-minute hero…I really don’t care. I feel zero investment in the guy, and could never understand why he wore that Vader mask in the first place.

One implication is that Luke will return from the dead like Lazarus or Jesus but c’mon…is there any end to this? When Obi-wan died, he stayed a spirit and didn’t “rise.” Is there any such thing as any super-character in any CG-driven tentpole fantasy EVER ACTUALLY DYING? (Han Solo doesn’t count — he’s mortal.) Storytellers have to respect for what each and every living thing (human, animal, vegetable) has confronted and come to respect as natural and immutable, which is that when death comes calling and the curtain comes down, THAT’S IT. But the infantilizing of the fantasy realm by the Sons of Lucas (the original infantilizer along with Spielberg) constantly defaults to “NO, HE/SHE ISN’T DEAD…HE/SHE LIVES AGAIN!”

If Luke is indeed toast and staying that way, then I take the last paragraph back. But if it he’s toast, what does “The Rise of Skywalker” mean?

To go by the trailer, an alternate title could be “The Rise of Carrie Fisher.”