HE to knowledgable friendo: “This Eyes Wide Shut argument has been nothing if not a surreal experience. On one side, Larry Smith, Lee Kline and their allies have been saying ‘this film wasn’t properly color-timed in ‘99, and now we’ve finally saved the day.’ On the other side the rational, non-fanatical contingent with an unfortunate … Read more
Yesterday Facebook‘s Mark Harris posted a well-written essay about Arthur Penn‘s Night Moves (’75) — an essay included in the just-released Night Moves 4k Bluray as well as posted on Criterion.com. This morning I wrote the following to Harris: “You naturally don’t want to ruin your valued relationship with Criterion so you’re not going to … Read more
We can at least be thankful that Lee Kline, Criterion’s very own in-house teal monster, had nothing to do with the forthcoming Ben-Hur 4K UHD Bluray. Thank God Almighty for that!
In the context of this highly divisive, incorrectly color-graded Bluray, the names Larry Smith and Criterion’s Lee Kline will live in infamy…talk about burnt bridges! >
IndieWire‘s Ryan Lattanzio has interviewed Larry Smith, the Eyes Wide Shut dp who more or less orchestrated the outrageous teal distortion of Stanley Kubrick‘s final film. Color-grading-wise, the just-released Criterion 4K Bluray version is, I strongly feel, an abomination. Lattanzio: “Cinephiles who got an early look at the new 4K transfer took issue on social … Read more
Sent this morning: Hollywood Elsewhere to Eyes Wide Shut dp Larry Smith, who oversaw the 4K digital restoration of Stanley Kubrick‘s 1999 film and is therefore the guy to blame for the notorious teal-tinting. (Message sent by way of Smith’s manager, Hillary C. Cook.) Hillary, Please forward this to the honorable Larry Smith, BSC. It’s … Read more
On 6.12.94, or two months shy of 30 years ago, Orenthal James Simpson murdered two people in Brentwood — his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, whom he nearly decapitated, and Ron Goldman, a “friend” of Brown’s who’d been working as a waiter at the long-since-closed Mezzaluna. And now O.J. has succumbed to prostate cancer at age … Read more
From Truman Capote‘s “The Duke In His Domain,” published in The New Yorker on 11.2.57…excellent writing, phrased just so, based on a Marlon Brando interview in Kyoto’s Miyako hotel during location filming of Sayonara: “The maid had reëntered the star’s room, and Murray, on his way out, almost tripped over the train of her kimono. … Read more
The 2017 TCM Classic Film Festival (Thursday, 4.6 thru Sunday, 4.9) announced its schedule today, but somebody on the staff screwed up as far as their 4.7 showing of John Huston‘s Beat The Devil is concerned. The 1953 black-and-white release is showing on Friday, April 7, at 11:15 am. A restored 94-minute version of this … Read more
Last Friday night (8.19) an extended cut of John Huston‘s Beat The Devil (’53) was screened at a tech symposium called “The Reel Thing,” which is co-sponsored and partly organized (or something like that) by the Association of Moving Image Archivists. The event happened between 8.18 and 8.20 at Hollywood’s Linwood Dunn theatre. The 2016 … Read more
In a 2.1 Indiewire/Thompson on Hollywood review of American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson, a ten-part miniseries which debuts tomorrow night, Matt Brennan offers one of the most absurd and wimpiest conclusions about the O.J. Simpson case ever published outside the African-American community, certainly in this century. In a sentence that calls the … Read more
For the third time I’m re-compiling HE’s Best of 2015 rundown, most of which will be permanently posted in the Oscar Balloon box right after the Oscars conclude on Sunday night. By my calculations there are at least 20 films opening within the next 10 and 1/2 months that look highly nutritional and aspirational, and … Read more