Month: November 2022

Steven Spielberg is a big fan of Kirk Douglas and Stanley Kubrick‘s Spartacus (’60), and in this AFI interview clip (which appears to be 20 or 25 years old) he shares two or three things that he likes in particular.

One is the duel to the death between Kirk Douglas‘s Spartacus and Woody Strode‘s Draba — short sword vs. three-pronged trident and net. Except starting at 1:28, Spielberg’s memory fails him. This isn’t a felony (we all misremember stuff) but I’m amazed that the AFI crew didn’t stop him and suggest a re-take.

Spielberg recalls that Spartacus and John Ireland‘s Crixus had become friendly, which is true, but they don’t fight each other– Spartacus and Draba do. Spielberg nonetheless recalls that in the dark holding pen adjacent to the gladiator arena, Douglas is sitting across from Crixus…wrong. Douglas and Strode share the pen while Ireland and another guy are fighting. Ireland winds up killing his opponent, and then staggers away, exhausted.

The power of the sequence is that Draba, who has stoically kept his feelings to himself, had told Spartacus that “gladiators can’t make friends…I might have to kill you.” But when Draba has gained the upper hand in the arena and is one trident thrust away from killing Douglas, he instead tosses the trident at the Romans who’ve been watching them from above (Laurence Olivier‘s Crassus, John Dall‘s Glabrus, Nina Foch‘s Helena Glabrus, Joanna Barnes‘ Claudia Marius).

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This morning I read portions of David Freeman‘s “The Last Days of Alfred Hitchcock,” a longish book excerpt which appeared in Esquire 40 years ago. From December ’78 to May ’79 Freeman worked with Hitchcock on a script of The Short Night, an espionage thriller what would have been Hitchcock’s 54th film.

The article is culled from Freeman’s “The Last Days of Alfred Hitchcock,” published on 11.30.84.

I was struck in particular by two passages, one about the AFI’s 1979 Life Achievement Award tribute to Hitchcock and Hitch’s reaction in particular to a note from an ailing Frank Capra, and another about Hitchcock’s occasional random interest in young women during his final year or two.

Here’s a link to Freeman’s April 1982 Esquire article.

I watched the AFI tribute on the tube that year, and my impression was that Hitch seemed barely “there” — no apparent energy or intellectual aliveness or curiosity even. He appeared, frankly, to be on the verge of slipping into a coma. I remember in particular that he didn’t seem to recognize Sean Connery when the star of Marnie was at the lecturn. It made me feel quite sad.

Here’s a capture of the Capra anecdote:

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Until an hour ago I had never heard of, much less seen, Welcome Danger, a 1929 Harold Lloyd adventure-comedy that was also (I think) his first sound film. Which is “topical,” in a sense, in this is more or less the historical turf of Damien Chazelle‘s Babylon (Paramount, 12.23), a film about the Hollywood changeover from silent to sound flicks.

In its 10.3.29 issue, The Film Daily reported that Lloyd would attend the 10.7.29 world premiere of Welcome Danger,” opening at the Rivoli Theater. Pic opened on Friday, 10.12.29.

Welcome Danger opened two weeks before the beginning of the ’29 Stock Market Crash. At the end of Thursday, 10.24.29, the market was at 299.5 — a 21 percent decline from a few days before. On Black Monday, or 10.28.29, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had dropped another 13 percent.

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Except this guy.

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With sensible film buffs dreading the inky arrival of the forthcoming 4K Casablanca Bluray (11.8), it’s worth reminding ourselves that for years Criterion has been the father of the shadows-and-ink aesthetic. The Criterion tech guys never met a mineshaft they didn’t like, a shadow that didn’t brighten their day.

Here’s a 2017 tribute piece to that effect, dated 8.11.17 and titled “Darkness Darkness“:

In the case of at least two relatively recent Criterion Blurays, Only Angels Have Wings and His Girl Friday, the tech guys darkened images that were slightly or distinctly brighter on previous Blurays and DVDs.

Criterion clearly has an occasional fetish for inkinessin the black-and-white realm. Two HE reviews, “Dark Angels, Black Barranca, Noir All Over” and “Inky, Grain-Smothered Friday Doesn’t Deliver Decent Bump”, complained about this.

And now, to judge by a new DVD Beaver review, the Criterion guys have gone all dark and inky on their forthcoming 4K-scanned Rebecca Bluray (due on 9.5.17).

Review quote: “Like their 2001 480p DVD, the image on the new Criterion Bluray of Rebecca is darker than [previous] digital releases. From our experience and comments from transfer specialists, ‘darker’ is usually more accurate to the theatrical presentation. You can see from the screen captures that the Criterion shows less information in the frame [and yet] the Criterion actually shows more on the top.”

Look at George Sanders‘ Jack Favell in these DVD Beaver-captured images. The lighter version is from the 2012 MGM Bluray (which I am totally happy with — thank God there’s a fine-looking Rebecca that hasn’t been inked up) and the darker, of course, is from the Criterion. What kind of sick-fuck cineaste would prefer the darker image? It looks as if heavy thunderstorm clouds are passing over Manderley, and that Favell is about to get soaked.

2017 Criterion Bluray version.

2012 MGM Bluray version.

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In an 11.2 interview with the L.A. Times Glenn Whipp, Quentin Tarantino stated that he and other filmmakers “can’t wait for the day” when the superhero genre finally runs out of gas.

When might this happen? Or more to the point, will it happen?

Excerpt: “[Tarantino] muses that, just as ’60s anti-establishment auteurs rejoiced when studio musical adaptations fell out of favor, today’s filmmakers ‘can’t wait for the day they can say that about superhero movies. The analogy works because it’s a similar [economic] chokehold.’”

When will that hallej]lujah moment arrive? “The writing’s not quite on the wall yet,” Tarantino says, “[or certainly] the way it was in 1969 when it was, ‘Oh, my God, we just put a bunch of money into things that nobody gives a damn about anymore.’”

QT kicker: “You have to be a hired hand to do [superhero films]. I’m not a hired hand. I’m not looking for a job.”

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…and attempted to govern in a sensible, moderate way…principled but restrained…if he had simply recognized and respected the fact that Average Joes and Janes had voted for him in ’20 as a rejection of Trump’s criminality and his temperamentally crazy cult-of-personality approach to everything…but of course he didn’t.

If Biden had simply adopted a “enough with the crazy” and let’s all celebrate fairness and moderation…holdupski on the sweeping woke nutter stuff and let’s bring back maturity and moderate liberalism…if he had simply and politely drawn the line and told the progressive “all white people are evil and racist” wackos to take a breath and turn the volume down…if he had done this and stuck to a sane agenda, the left wouldn’t be in the appalling situation that it’s currently in.

In short, I agree with roughly 90% of the 11.4 edition of Andrew Sullivan‘s Weekly Dish column, titled “Will Biden and the Dems Finally Get It?”

Excerpt: “There was no choice in 2020, given Trump. I understand that. If he runs again, we’ll have no choice one more time. And, more than most, I am aware of the profound threat to democratic legitimacy that the election-denying GOP core now represents. But that’s precisely why we need to send the Dems a message this week, before it really is too late.

“By ‘we,’ I mean anyone not committed to the hard-left agenda Biden has relentlessly pursued since taking office. In my view, he and his media mouthpieces have tragically enabled the far right over the past two years far more than they’ve hurt them.

“I hoped in 2020 that after a clear but modest win, with simultaneous gains for the GOP in the House and a fluke tie in the Senate, Biden would grasp a chance to capture the sane middle, isolating the far right. After the horror of January 6, the opportunity beckoned ever more directly.

“And yet Biden instantly threw it away. In return for centrists’ and moderates’ support, Biden effectively told us to get lost and championed the entire far-left agenda.

“[He pushed] the biggest expansion in government since LBJ; a massive stimulus that, in a period of supply constraints, fueled durable inflation; a second welfare stimulus was also planned — which would have made inflation even worse; record rates of mass migration, and no end in sight; a policy of almost no legal restrictions on abortion (with public funding as well!); the replacement of biological sex with postmodern “genders”; the imposition of critical race theory in high schools and critical queer theory in kindergarten; an attack on welfare reform; ‘equity’ hiring across the federal government; plans to regulate media ‘disinformation’; fast-track sex-changes for minors; next-to-no due process in college sex-harassment proceedings; and on and on it went.

“Even the policy most popular with the center — the infrastructure bill — was instantly conditioned on an attempt to massively expand the welfare state. What on earth in this agenda was there for anyone in the center?”

“I’m just average, common too. I’m just like him and the same as you. I’m everybody’s brother and son. I’m no different than anyone.”

Maher: “The left has gone super crazy.” Yes, they have. And Average Joes hate them for it, and this is why the right is going to do well next Tuesday night, and why the world is going to get much uglier as a result. Thank you, wokesters, for bringing down the temple walls.