Day: June 1, 2020

Thanks, Looters & Church Burners

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Thanks for giving The Beast a potential election boost by allowing him to appear semi-sane, at least in the eyes of Average Joes.

I didn’t think it would be possible for Trump to adopt a semi-palatable look in the middle of all this righteous rage and in the wake of his horrific non-handling of the pandemic, but he’s managed that. Or the looters have, I should say. It’s bullshit, of course, but he’s selling it.

Last night’s demonstration in Lafayette Park was peaceful, I’ve read. But Trump sent in troops regardless. Tear gas all around. Then he went over to St. John’s and held up a bible. Jesus wept.

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20th Century Hound and Then Some

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If JFK had eluded assassination in Dallas he’d be 103 years old this month, an unlikely milestone given the frail state of his health (including Addison’s disease) reaching back to the 1940s and ’50s. But if he had somehow lived to age 100 (like Norman Lloyd and Kirk Douglas managed without breaking much of a sweat), he probably would have been sliced and diced by #MeToo. It would’ve been brutal, and he wouldn’t have had much of a defense.

Given the fact that his compulsive Don Juaning was way beyond anything Bill Clinton or Gary Hart could have even dreamt of, the 35th president lived and died within the right time frame. For all his admirable qualities, he was not a man for all seasons.

But when you compare JFK to the present Oval Office occupant…forget it. And yet he was, by any even-handed standard, a #MeToo villain. As much of a sexist dinosaur as James Bond was in his realm. And yet at the same time a guy who knew from dignity…refined, discreet, educated, thoughtful, civilized…a guy who exuded a certain elan and conveyed a bracing vision of things, and seemed to know what voters wanted of him and how to behave. An elitist, okay, but not a racist, and always with a healthy suspicion of Republicans and those big businessmen he regarded as “sons of bitches.”

But it was probably better that he lived when he did. Because when you consider his reported attitudes about women…okay, there’s nowhere to go with this. Different eras. The twains could never meet.

From Christopher Sandford‘s “Harold and Jack: The Remarkable Friendship of Prime Minister Macmillan and President Kennedy“:

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See HD Boxy “Jacket” While You Can

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Last night I was browsing through some HBO Max films, and was startled to discover that the boxy (1.37:1) version of Stanley Kubrick‘s Full Metal Jacket (’87) is being HD streamed. Which is certainly cause for celebration.

One, I hadn’t watched this version of FMJ since the early aughts, or soon after the release of the 2001 “Kubrick Collection” DVD version, which was mastered in 1.37:1. Two, until last night I’d never seen the boxy version in 1080p HD, as the ’01 DVD was naturally presented in 480p. And three, Kubrick preferred the boxy version to the cleavered 1.85, which is how 99.5% of the home viewing public has seen this Vietnam War classic.


Full Metal Jacket as it currently appears on HBO Max, with a 1.37:1 aspect ratio.

Same scene within the standard 1.85 a.r., which is how almost everyone has seen Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 Vietnam War classic over the last 15 or 20 years, give or take.

HE is advising all HBO Max subscribers to stream the boxy FMJ as soon as possible before it disappears. Because the sworn enemies of “boxy is beautiful” will be doing everything they can to erase this version, despite the fact that Kubrick personally preferred it.

Seriously, hurry. If I know Bob Furmanek and the 1.85 fascist cabal they’ll soon be hounding HBO Max to swap out the boxy with the 1.85. These guys are fanatics. They hate boxy and will stop at nothing.

Perhaps someone on the HB0 Max tech team made a “mistake” in uploading the boxy version, but it’s a good mistake, trust me.

Consider the following 2008 DVD Talk interview with longtime Kubrick employee and collaborator Leon Vitali, in which he explains Kubrick’s visual aesthetic:

DVD Talk: “One of the areas of greatest debate in the DVD community is about aspect ratios. The two films that people talk about the most in terms of aspect ratio are Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut, maybe because those are the ones that have been seen theatrical by the DVD buying audience. But people will go through [these films] frame by frame and say ‘in the trailer of Eyes Wide Shut, you can see a sign on the street that you can’t see on the full frame video. You can see an extra character.’ So how do you address the differences between the theatrical releases of Eyes Wide Shut and of Full Metal Jacket in the DVD releases?”

Vitali: The original video release of Full Metal Jacket was in the supervised hands and owned by Stanley. The thing about Stanley, he was a photographer. That’s how he started. He had a still photographer’s eye. So when he composed a picture through the camera, he was setting up for what he saw through the camera — the full picture. That was very important to him. It really was. It was an instinct that never ever left him.

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