Each and every waking minute I’m considering and comparing the content of strong, impactful cinema (smarthouse, popcorn, the entire gamut) with the repetitive, complex, meditative, often demanding, occasionally grueling nature of actual, day-to-day life, and the cross-pollination (in my head at least) is not only constant but illuminating.

For me good films are not just helpful in understanding the unruly cacophony of things (ironic, euphoric, tragic, symphonic, soul-deadening, absurd, comedic, existential) — they are essential guideposts in that effort.

Even a popcorn film like Speed offers a measure of perspective or a yardstick by which the tumultuous nature of things can be broken down and simplified or at least considered in a way that has value. Life and movies have always bled into each other. Everything’s everything.

Exactly three weeks hence, Eva Marie Saint will celebrate her 100th birthday — 7.4.24. Which is kind of a big deal. She was the belle of the ball between the early ‘50s and mid ‘60s — On The Waterfront (her performance in this 1954 classic resulted in a Best Supporting Actress Oscar), A Hatful of Rain, North by Northwest, Exodus, Grand Prix. She and George Segal were memorable as an unhappily married couple in Irvin Kershner’s Loving (‘70).

…to Emma Corrin’s hairy armpits and everything that accompanies this aesthetic…butchy demeanor, choppy hair, plural pronouns, all that stuff…a non-judgmental decline….. As Samuel Goldwyn once said, “Include me out.”

Doug Liman‘s The Instigators, produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon‘s Artists Equity, is a half-comic heist thriller….give it to me. Written by Chuck Maclean and Casey Affleck, and starring Casey, Matt and Hong Chau, Michael Stuhlbarg, Paul Walter Hauser, Ving Rhames and Alfred Molina.

Will anyone see it theatrically when it opens on 8.2.24? Of course not. Because Apple Tv+ will begin streaming it a week later (8.9.24).

I’ve been waiting a long time to see the much-promoted 4K restoration of North by Northwest, and so I couldn’t resist attending yesterday’s Tribeca Film Festival screening at the Village East Angelika.

I had a reasonable expectation that the restorationists had enhanced Alfred Hitchock’s 1959 classic with a distinct visual bump effect (as in “whoa, this looks better than ever before!”).

This would have been due, I figured, to their having sourced the original 8-perf 35mm VistaVision camera negative with all restoration work completed in 6.5k, and then overseeing the creation of a 65mm negative and finally having Fotokem create a 70mm film print.

That 70mm print was what was shown at the Village East last night, and I have to be honest — it looked very nice but it didn’t blow me away, and it certainly didn’t make my eyeballs go “boinnnggg!” There was absolutely no “bump” effect, and I was sitting there going “what the fuck?” and “why am I not looking at the very best NXNW ever created or projected…not since the waning days of the Eisenhower administration but ever, especially given the 8K VistaVision negative scan?”

I’m not saying that Jim Hemphill’s 6.11 IndieWire piece on the NXNW restoration is bullshit, but…okay, I guess I am calling it bullshit because it makes you think “whoa, here’s my chance to see a great Hitchcock classic in the best visual condition ever!”

What I saw yesterday evening was just…very nice. Approvable. Agreeable but nothing to bounce up and down about on a trampoline.

Here’s why: 70mm presentations are no longer the cat’s meow. Creating a 70mm NXNW print is a fine, excellent thing in terms of archival preservation, but the sharpest and most vibrant way to present a digitally restored film (NXNW was scanned at 13K but restored at 6.5K, whatever the hell that means) upon a large screen is via 4K digital projection.

You’re losing two generations of clarity by (a) creating a 65mm negative and then (b) creating a 65mm print, so right away audiences are being shown a less-than-optimum image. And then you’re at the mercy of the projection standards at whatever given theatre (proper or improper foot lambert levels, sufficiently sharp or underwhelming sound).

So there’s no obvious enhancement and nothing to go crazy about, and the strong black levels, by the way, that are visible in the 2009 NXNW Bluray have been mostly removed or at least significantly dialed down. There’s nothing the least bit pinkish about the sky in this sequence, but there’s no question they’ve diminished the blacks.

The cropduster sequence, also, has now been tinted with a slight amber-light brown effect, which struck me as affected.

In short, if you want to see the very best rendering of this new Film Foundation-approved restoration, wait for the Bluray, which will “street” later this year.

As I was walking uptown after the screening, I felt like Sterling Hayden‘s General Jack D. Ripper in that Dr. Strangelove scene right after the Burpleson Air Force base surrender. Speaking to Peter Sellers‘ Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, Hayden says, “Those boys were like my children, Mandrake, and now they’ve let me down.”