The Trumpian right has long regarded blue America — urban, mostly liberal, multiracial, LGBTQ, not especially religious — as a primal threat to their cherished memory of an overwhelmingly white, straight and church-attending America of yore. They consider this threat to be so fundamentally dangerous that they’re pretty much ready to let Donald Trump ignore the rule of law and, if need be, even the Democratic system to squash or stop it. They’re willing to let Trump do whatever the hell he wants, because he’s on their side and that’s all they care about.

“Having a fact-based debate in this culture is becoming almost impossible,” journalist-author Carl Bernstein said last November. “It is not just political but cultural…at all levels in our society…it’s clear to me that something is not working in America today, that the system is straining almost to the breaking point in our journalism, in our politics…partisan assertion, self interest and careerism and ideological warfare at the expense of the national interest.”

On the part of the looney-tune, Trump-supporting right, he means.

Posted on 7.4.14: “The Declaration of Independence, adopted on July 4, 1776, proclaimed that the 13 American colonies were detaching themselves from English rule and were therefore free and independent states — quite a brave thing, raised quite a rumpus.

“The United States of America would not become relatively united and cohesive until after the end of the Civil War, of course, but for 130 years the U.S. of A. at least approximated the idea of a nation more or less bonded by shared beliefs, convictions and social goals. That’s obviously no longer true. Today and beyond the U.S. of A. is impossibly divided and never the twain shall meet. The right has gone totally around the bend. The urban Blues are the Czech Republic and the rural Reds are Slovakia, and I really think it’s time for the Czechs to sign a new Declaration of Independence and cut those bozos loose.

This morning a film-fanatic friend said his biggest hope for the ’18 Cannes Film Festival is Lars von Trier’s serial killer flick, The House That Jack Built. My immediate response was “really?” Von Trier’s weakness, I explained, “is that he feels he has to be the visionary blunt tool — a stylistically unrefined bad boy. And so he has to deliver provocative films of a certain extreme quality. And so a bad-boy movie about a serial killer…well, c’mon. You can sense what’s in store.”

The truth is that I haven’t really felt the Von Trier love since Dogville (’03) and more particularly the brilliant and shattering Dancer in the Dark (’00), which I still regard as one of the most exciting and innovative musicals of all time.

Everyone was with Von Trier in the ’90s (Breaking The Waves, The Idiots). I started to disengage with Manderlay (’05), never saw The Boss Of It All (’06), really hated Antichrist (’09), was moderately okay with Melancholia (’11), and felt mostly distanced by the “intelligent, jaggedly assembled, dispassionate wank” that was Nymphomaniac, Volume One. I called Nymphomaniac, Volume Two “a cinematic equivalent of a ‘cold spot’ in a haunted house.”

Set in the ’70s and ’80s, Von Trier’s latest follows Jack (Matt Dillon) over the course of 12 years and five increasingly risky murders. From an official synopsis: “Jack views each murder as an artwork in itself, even though his dysfunction gives him problems in the outside world.”

In February 2017 Von Trier described the film as “celebrating the idea that life is evil and soulless, which is sadly proven by the recent rise of the homo Trumpus — the rat king.”

It’s been reported that at least four of the victims are women, and will be played by Uma Thurman, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Sofie Grabol and Riley Keough. This aspect alone is sure to reignite charges that Von Trier is some kind of compulsive misogynist, especially in this #MeToo tinderbox era. The brutal punishings suffered by his female characters over the years — Bjork‘s in Dancer in the Dark, Emily Watson‘s in Breaking The Waves, Nicole Kidman‘s in Dogville, Charlotte Gainsbourg‘s in Antichrist and Nymphomaniac — provide fuel for this hypothesis.

Nobody had much to say about my 3.15 review of Greg Berlanti‘s Love, Simon, but it opened yesterday so what’s the reaction? By any measure an antiseptic, intensely suburban gay teen romance, I described it as (a) “definitely half-decent,” (b) “smartly written” but a little “too tidy, too dream-fantasy, too TV-realm and not laid-back enough.” But at the same time not bad. I mentioned that it’s the first big-screen adaptation of a YA novel (Becky Albertalli‘s “Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda”) that I’ve half-liked, but it still feels a little too YA-ish.

Two days ago I mentioned the “enticing” possibility of Woody Allen‘s A Rainy Day in New York playing at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. I remarked that a booking of Allen’s most recent effort “would be a way for festival topper Thierry Fremaux to not only honor a relationship with a still-important filmmaker but declare that Cannes is about cinematic art first and nervous-nelly politics second.”

This morning a friend passed along second-hand dope from a “Cannes insider”, the gist being that (a) A Rainy Day in New York “is being heavily considered,” and (b) the pulse-quickening notion of screening the Woody (which costars Timothee Chalamet, Selena Gomez, Elle Fanning, Jude Law and Diego Luna) is currently “outweighing the ramifications of any bad press” that may result — i.e., the Robespierres chanting that a film by a director who may have molested a seven-year-old adopted daughter 25 years ago shouldn’t be so honored.

(l. to r.) Timothee Chalamet, Selena Gomez, Woody Allen during filming of A Rainy Day in New York.

Fremaux is a longtime Woody loyalist. Since joining Cannes in ’01 he’s been instrumental in booking seven Allen films — Hollywood Ending, Match Point, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, Midnight in Paris, Irrational Man and Cafe Society. Given this history it’s hardly surprising to hear that Fremaux “wanted to book A Rainy Day in New York before it was even shot last fall.”

Another factor favoring a Rainy Day appearance is that Fremaux also wants to play Felix Van Groeningen‘s Beautiful Boy (Amazon, 10.12), a drug-addiction drama costarring Timothee Chalamet and Steve Carell. This plus Rainy Day would theoretically double the Chalamet press coverage…or would it?

With Chalamet having thrown Woody under the bus by announcing that he’s standing with the Robespierres as well as donating his Rainy Day salary to a #TimesUp defense fund, will he attend the Rainy Day Cannes premiere or duck out of town?

Two years ago I posted “Strangelove Color Trip,” which consisted of seven color snaps (in the old HE format width of 460 pixels), all taken during filming of Stanley Kubrick‘s Dr. Strangelove in early 1963. This morning I came upon several more; I’ve also re-rendered four or five shots from March ’16 in HE’s current (640 pixel) column width. I let one black-and-white shot slip in (i.e., Kubrick hand-drawing Lolita glasses on a nuclear warhead), but only because I’d never seen it before today.

A day or two after posting about Tony Zierra‘s Filmworker, the Lon Vitali-Stanley Kubrick documentary that will open in early May, I re-watched it on my Macbook Pro. And what a deep, penetrating, all-knowing, all-encompassing thing it is. A visit to a rarified realm of vision and obsession, of giving your all and getting nowhere near enough sleep, but finally being part of a very special history.

I feel a special kinship with Filmworker and particularly Vitali himself because I am as much of an obsessive at column-writing as Vitali was with the Great Stanley K. all those years (i.e., pre-Shining to post-production on Eyes Wide Shut).

Anyway, the laptop viewing allowed me to capture images of Leon between takes while he was playing the “redcloak” interrogator in Eyes Wide Shut. Ditto a couple of stills of a fictional EWS newspaper story that mentioned “London fashion designer Leon Vitali” having allegedly had an affair with the “beauty queen dead from drug overdose,” etc.

Leon Vitali, relatively recently.

Longtime Stanley Kubrick aide Leon Vitali between takes during filming of Eyes Wide Shut.

In the current environment a single accusation of sexual harassment isn’t necessarily a black spot a la “Treasure Island.” But facing three separate harassment claims is obviously cause for concern.

“Three harassment claims” presumably means that three persons (I’m guessing women in the case of AMPAS president John Bailey) have come forward, but did they do so as a group? Or did the harassment complaints surface of their own volition and time clock, and they just happened to arrive at roughly the same time? I wonder.

Academy statement given to Deadline: “The Academy treats any complaints confidentially to protect all parties. The Membership Committee reviews all complaints brought against Academy members according to our Standards of Conduct process, and after completing reviews, reports to the Board of Governors. We will not comment further on such matters until the full review is completed.”

Bailey, a 75-year-old cinematographer (Groundhog Day, American Gigolo, As Good As It Gets), replaced Cheryl Boone Isaacs as the Academy’s president last August.

Give the Academy’s pledge of due diligence, I wonder if it’s fair to mention the politically-incorrect comments of director Terry Gilliam, 77, in the same space. They surfaced earlier today in an interview with AFP (Agence France Presse). Not because Bailey and Gilliam’s situations are in any way similar, but I wonder if Gilliam will take any heat for his remarks (The Man Who Killed Don Quixote could debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May), or will the Robespierres cut him a break on the strength of his sounding a bit like a dinosaur?

Gilliam said the atmosphere around #MeToo has “got silly…people are being described in ridiculous terms as if there is no real humanity left anymore.” HE response: How is it silly or inhumane to demand that sexual harassers and other misbehavers face some kind of community pushback if they’ve hurt or exploited women in some kind of cruel way?

Two days ago critic Inkoo Kang posted a Hollywood Reporter piece that encouraged the industry not to punish or disparage Ava DuVernay because A Wrinkle In Time is a critical and commercial bust.

Kang basically argued that if you’ve given white male directors a pass after making a mediocre film or two or three, be fair about it and cut DuVernay a little slack also.

Everybody drops the ball at one time or another, she basically said, and DuVernay, at least, screwed up because she took a chance, which is the best excuse or rationale for failure that you can offer. A “messy script with too many affirmational platitudes and not enough character development”? Okay, but also “wildly ambitious” and “intensely personal.”

“It’s important to note the ludicrously unfair burden that A Wrinkle in Time was saddled with as soon as DuVernay signed on,” Kang writes. “It had to be both artistically dazzling and a commercial hit in order for it to be considered any kind of success. Grossly put, the ‘system’ was rigged against it.

“A truly inclusive industry would give a pass to DuVernay as it has to so many white male directors (not that her career is now in any sort of trouble). Diversity that demands all people from marginalized groups never make a mistake is no diversity at all. It’s also annoying that advocates of diversity are forced once again into a defensive posture, making a case for one of our own, when the problem has always been the scarcity of opportunities, not the merits of inclusion.

Last November I riffed about Tony Richardson‘s Tom Jones (’63) and the then-forthcoming Criterion Bluray. Right away there were concerns about whether the 4K remastering would significantly improve the look of the film, which, as shot by the late Walter Lassally (A Taste Of Honey, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner), always had a gamey, grainy, rough-hewn appearance.

HE commenter David Matychuk claimed that the laserdisc of Richardson’s recut version was “bad [with] weird colors and very murky in the night scenes.” Bob Cashill noted that “the lack of a decent-quality presentation has hindered Tom Jones‘ reputation for decades…the Criterion disc should correct that.”

Well, I finally watched it last night, and it’s a revelation — sharp and clean and fresh from the lab in ’63. Or like fresh milk from a cow. All my life I’ve been saying that Tom Jones is a great film but it looks a wee bit cruddy — no longer!

The Bluray delivers a certain unforced radiance — very celluloid-looking, of course, and no better or worse than what anyone with a good eyes would see, but quietly robust and alive with natural color. There’s no chance of discovering new detail in scenes that were shot at dusk and meant to look dark, of course, but when there’s decent indoor or outdoor light, wow! I actually sat up in my seat and leaned forward and started muttering “whoa, whoa, wait…this is good.” It delivers, in short, the kind of “bump” that I’m always looking for from a good Bluray.

The colors in the below Vimeo clip, a portion of an essay in which Duncan Petrie “discusses some of the creative choices that made Tom Jones so influential”, are close to what I saw last night but at the same time not quite. The Jones Bluray has to be seen — experienced — on a good 4K HDR monitor (preferably on a 60-inch screen or larger) to be fully appreciated. The YouTube capturing of the hunt sequence [after the jump] is how previous versions have looked for decades — i.e., muted, a bit brownish, not good enough.

Three weeks ago I referenced a Digital Bits report from Bill Hunt about Warner Home Video planning to release a 50th anniversary 4K Bluray of 2001: A Space Odyssey. As Stanley Kubrick‘s classic opened in the U.S. on 4.3.68, it seemed reasonable to assume it would “street” sometime next month.

Well, it’s not — the 4K 2001 will pop on 5.8.18. And the Amazon price is $41.99 — gougers! The perfectly rendered 2007 Bluray version sells for $22 to $28 less, depending on where you buy it. An HD streaming version sells for $12.99.

The alleged jacket art that I posted on 2.22 looked suspicious, I said, because it lacked any mention of “remastered UHD 4K,” and then HE commenter Carl LaFong explained that the jacket art was from a French steelbook Bluray release from 2015. Except the WHV 4K disc is using it anyway — the final jacket art is below.