Day: December 29, 2020

Once upon a time (i.e., pre-Covid) award-season movies would generate a certain vibration. They (and you) would hit the industry or press-screening circuit and then they’d open commercially and hang around for three or four weeks, and you could sense a certain occupational presence.

This was in the good old days of 2019 and before, of course…way back when you could watch films with a crowd and actually sit next to strangers and shit. I’m saying this because streaming and occasional DVD-watching are piss-poor substitutes. Even watching films at invitational drive-in showings…even that doesn’t get it.

In the current environment it’s very easy to watch something really good and then forget about it…it’s respected but doesn’t linger and just flies out of your mind. Streaming will never replace sitting in front of a 50-foot-wide screen. Because your TV screen lacks that power, that dominance, that persuasive presence that movies need. If the current is missing, fuhgedaboudit. Because it makes all the difference in the world.

I was never an electric toy train fanatic as a kid, but I remember being gifted with a five-piece set with tracks, a transformer and whatnot. I can’t recall if the maker was Lionel or Marx, but I do remember how heavy the engine car was (it really did weigh a fair amount) and that it generated a nice howling sound as it moved around the room and also emitted a simulation of steam. The electric current in the tracks was such that you could hear a faint throbbing or humming. If a strand or two of Christmas tree tinsel happened to fall on the tracks and the engine ran over it you’d hear a slight snapping sound and notice an odor of burnt whatever. I think I was seven or eight when the set arrived one Christmas. I think the purchaser (father, grandfather) was into trains for his own enjoyment, and that I hitched a ride.

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I saw Robert Altman‘s Buffalo Bill and The Indians when it opened in June ’76. It’s a flat, pedantic film about the legacy of evil whiteys (personified by Paul Newman‘s Buffalo Bill) vs. that of noble Native Americans (Frank Kaquitts‘ Sitting Bull). It instructs the audience about who the good and bad guys were (and probably still are), and sorta kinda bores your pants off in the process.

But wait — it compounds. Imagine being in charge of the mastering of the recently released Indicator Bluray (12.14) of Buffalo Bill and The Indians, and deciding to capture what is being called “the original ‘antique’ color timing” — color that, judging by DVD Beaver captures, is overwhelmingly brownish and quite dark. Except it didn’t look this way in theatres. Believe me, I would have noticed.

Geraldine Chaplin, Burt Lancaster, Kevin McCarthy, Joel Grey, Harvey Keitel, John Considine, Will Sampson, Shelley Duvall, Bert Remsen, Denver Pyle, etc.

A more pleasantly colored Bluray version was released by Kino in 2014.

Again, Bluray captures belong to DVD Beaver.

From Fast Company‘s Michael Grothaus: “Operation Warp Speed is sputtering. Under the Trump administration’s vaccination roll-out, the goal was to have 20 million Americans receive their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine by the end of December — a critical step in not only inoculating the most vulnerable, but also eventually achieving herd immunity in the country

“It is estimated that between 80% and 90% of Americans would need to be vaccinated to reach herd immunity.

“But instead of 20 million doses being administered this month, the U.S. has only administered 2.1 million doses so far — barely a tenth of the original goal, reports Axios. That means that if the U.S. is to meet its 20 million goal, it would need to vaccinate more than five million people a day between now and the end of Thursday — an unlikely occurence.”

Until this morning I’d never realized that John Ford‘s The Informer played at the Radio City Music Hall. An odd venue for such a film. The Informer is a arthouse film for adults, but I guess back then there was no such term. (To the best of my recollection “smarthouse” wasn’t a term until five or ten years ago.) The RKO Radio Pictures ad department tried to make The Informer seem like a relationship thing between a brawny, alarmed fellow who’s been under a sunlamp and a foxy blonde (Heather Angel or Margot Grahame?) with a lit cigarette.

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This wire-service story appeared in the N.Y. Times on 5.11.35. Chilling. I naturally began thinking about authoritarian repression tactics in other times and cultures. I’m not offering any exact analogies or pointing specific fingers, but from what corner of our present-day culture are we hearing “not allowed, you can’t say that, shut it down, fire this person, lights out”? Be honest — who’s saying that kind of stuff these days? Am I allowed to ask this question?

As a longtime chronicler of those wraparound DeMille/Mayfair billboards, this is fairly unique. For Robert Siodmak and Mark Hellinger‘s The Killers didn’t play the Mayfair but the legendary Winter Garden theatre. United Artists briefly turned the decades-old venue into a movie palace between ’45 and ’46.

The Killers opened in August 1946

Jules Dassin’s Night and the City opened on 6.9.50.

James Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein opened on 5.11.35.