I’m happy to read that Rene Rodriguez is extra-double impressed with the new Taxi Driver 4K UHD Bluray, which is part of the Columbia Classics 4K Ultra HD Collection, Volume 2, but is not yet purchasable as a stand-alone.

But really, how much better could the visual values be on this disc? Shot on 35mm Eastman color negative 100T 5254/7254 film using Arriflex 35 BL camera and Zeiss super speed lenses with portions captured on 16mm, Taxi Driver can only look as good as it can look.

I’ve seen it in theatres, on laser disc, DVD, Bluray and 4K streaming, and it looks fine but will never knock anyone’s eyeballs out.

The Amazon 4K streaming version looks pretty great, in fact.

It’s all well and good for the hearing-challenged community to have its own Marvel superhero. This plus CODA makes 2021 a banner year in this respect, but banner isn’t the word I’m really thinking of — it’s banal. As in “what a banal world we’re all living in”….representation matters, representation matters, representation matters. But shouldn’t other stuff matter when it comes to making gripping cinema? You know that because Ridloff is part of the Eternals family…aahh, forget it. Not worth going into.

Tomorrow the handicappers will sample their very first taste of Javier Bardem’s performance as Desi Arnaz in Being The Ricardos, and will thereafter decide, depending on how much tasty Desi footage is included, if it’s a possible Oscar-level thing or not. Pins and needles, fate of nations, etc.

The long-awaited commercial release of Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune is only days away. Theatrical + HBO Max on Friday, 10.22, with many theatres launching the night before. And with that, Average Joes and Janes will render a verdict about whether or not Dune belongs on a list of potential Best Picture contenders.

In this light, Dune has four Gold Derby handicappers in its corner — IndieWire‘s Anne Thompson (#2), Yahoo‘s Kevin Polowy (#1) and Variety‘s Clayton Davis (#3) and Tim Gray (#1).

So in a sense these four critics will be facing the music this weekend also. As you and your movie-watching brethren watch this 155-minute sand epic, say to yourself “it wasn’t just the usual gifted suspects who created this film — director-cowriter Villeneuve, dp Greig Fraser, screenwriters Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth and star Timothee Chalamet — but also Thompson, Polowy, Davis and Gray, who’ve done what they can to lend award-season cred.”

In a strictly illegal sense, Dune “opened” yesterday morning when pirates began streaming an alleged HD version. I’ve only pirate-streamed two movies in my life — Roman Polanski‘s J’Accuse and Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in Manhattan — and see no reason not to wait for Thursday.

But I’m telling you right now I can’t wait to hate this thing. At least I’m honest about this. Every fibre of my being wants to loathe it. By the same token if I like it and say so, it’ll mean more than praise from some snivelling gladhander critic.

And then two weeks later comes Chloe Zhao‘s Eternals, which I’m also looking forward to despising with every fibre of my being. Because Eternals hates me. I know how it’s going to make me feel, and so I’m turning it around and pledging to give it back before the fact. Death to Marvel unless it’s the Marvel films I like. Death to superhero franchises. Death to superhero wisecracks. Death to dinner-table camaraderie. Death to all of it.

Friendo: “Technically Dune is wonderful.  It will probably sweep all the tech awards at the Oscars.  Still stuck with that storyline which is a bit on the ‘who cares?’ spectrum.  Oddly enough the most compelling and likable character is Jason Momoa‘s.

“David Lynch‘s 1984 version is 2 and 1/2 hours long. The new film ends at around the 90 minute mark of the Lynch film, so basically it’s another hour of storytelling that if they get to make Part 2, which will actually take a lot longer than an hour.”

I should have posted this Bari Weiss-slash-Brian Stelter discussion yesterday.

Key passage: “What’s going on [now] is the transformation of these sense-making institutions of American life. It’s the news media, it’s the publishing houses, it’s the Hollywood studios, it’s our universities, and they are narrowing in a radical way what’s acceptable to say and what isn’t. And you and I both know there doesn’t need to be an edict from the C-suite for people to feel that.”

Author and Canadian evolutionary psychologist Gal Saad to George Takei after the latter complained about Dave Chappelle‘s trans remarks in The Closer: “Stop being such a whiney faux victim….you could not have survived five minutes of my childhood in Lebanon.”

The Mick Jagger and Keith Richard love lifted the SoFi stadium off the ground last night…the entire place (the size of 10 or 15 Roman Colisseums stacked side by side and atop each other) dislodged from its foundations and rose above terra firma like the mother ship in Close Encounters. The crowd of 40K or 45K or thereabouts was as one.

That said, I kinda missed the intimacy of the 20K seat Madison Square Garden experience. But that’s me.

The Mick love was especially levitational. Thank you, oh godly metaphor of lasting vigor and thick, nut-brown hair and flat abdominal muscles, for looking like a weathered Peter Pan and prancing around like a 36 year-old workout Nazi…take our hearts and caress them, please! Talk about a contact high…

I expected the crowd to be around 65% boomers and older GenXers, and 35% younger GenX with maybe a sprinkling of older Millennials. Instead it was more like 35% or 40% boomer. Okay, maybe 45%. There were two pretty 20something girls sitting right behind us. I almost said something encouraging to them, but an instinct said “leave well enough alone.” Maybe they’re friendly with that Woke Ice Cream Girl who works in the Farmer’s Market.

The Gotti mob charged people $80 to park in the various surrounding lots (millions raked in) and we were stuck in parking-lot gridlock for 90 minutes. The show ended around 10:50 pm, and we weren’t free of the snarl until 12:20 am…no exaggeration.

19th Nervous Breakdown from Hollywood Elsewhere on Vimeo.