Presumably everyone knows by now that Criterion is coming out with a 4K-mastered Barry Lyndon Bluray on 10.17, or about three months hence. The big thing from HE’s perspective is that they’re going with a totally correct 1.66:1 aspect ratio. This amounts to a stiff rebuke to longtime Kubrick associate and Warner Home Video consultant Leon Vitali, who six years ago persuaded WHV to release a Lyndon Bluray that cropped Stanley Kubrick‘s masterpiece at at 1.78:1.

The problem is that the Bluray table of contents on the Criterion page doesn’t seem to acknowledge the highly significant, historically important Lyndon aspect ratio brouhaha of 2011 — one of the most bitterly fought and not incidentally triumphant a.r. battles in Hollywood Elsewhere history, the other being the Shane a.r. battle of 2013.

Glenn Kenny actually provided the coup de grace in the form of a letter confirming Kubrick’s wish to have Lyndon screened at 1.66, but HE felt a surge of pride regardless because I’d insisted all along that 1.66 was the only way to go.

Why doesn’t Criterion’s Peter Becker man up and admit that his company’s decision to go with a 1.66 a.r. on their Lyndon Bluray was at least a partial offshoot of the HE/Kenny-vs.-Vitali debate? Why don’t they just act like men and cop to it instead of pussyfooting around and pretending it never happened?

The ultimate way to go, of course, is for Criterion to present its remastered Barry Lyndon on an actual 4K Bluray, as opposed to a 1080p Bluray using a 4K scan. If they do this I’ll break down and buy a 4K Bluray player.

The Barry Lyndon a.r. debate ranged between 5.23.11 and 6.21.11. I posted three or four argumentative pieces about the Barry Lyndon Bluray in late May, but before 6.21.11, which is when the whole matter was cleared up when Kenny posted that “smoking gun” letter from Jay Cocks and I ran my q & a with Vitali explaining “the confusion.”

Last night I saw a 70mm IMAX version of Christopher Nolan‘s Dunkirk. Staggering, breathtaking, HANDS DOWN BRILLIANT — not just a Best Picture contender for 2017 (obviously) and not just Nolan’s best (ditto) but easily among the greatest war films ever made in this or the 20th Century. Saving Private Ryan, step aside. The Longest Day, sorry. Full Metal Jacket, down half a peg. Gabriel’s trumpet is blaring from the heavens — this is a major, MAJOR 21st Century achievement.

Dunkirk is not just exceptional cinema but majestically its own thing in an arty, stand-alone, mad-paintbrush sort of way — emotional but immediate and breathtaking, but at the same time standing back a bit by eschewing the usual narrative and emotional engagement strategies that 100 other war films have used in the past (and will probably use again and again in the future).

Thank you, Chris, for not explaining who each character is or giving me their back story or supplying them with an emotional speech or two. Thank you for just plunking me down on that huge Dunkirk beach of 75 years ago and letting me fend for myself, for putting me right in the middle of 400,000 young British troops trying to get the hell out of there before the Germans come and rip them to shreds with bombs and hot lead.

Dunkirk is way above the usual-usual. It will tower, stand astride, fly, soar, float, bob and IMAX the shit out of you. A Colossus of Rhodes awaits at your nearest IMAX theatre. Just don’t see it on a regular-sized screen…please. Go as big and loud as you can. Beg, borrow, wait in line…whatever it takes.

Does everyone understand the exceptionalism here? The critics do but others don’t. People who like the usual massages and neck rubs (i.e., guys like Jeff Sneider) are expressing concerns. I’ve been told that a certain name-brand journalist found it a drag. Some (okay, a couple of women) feel it’s not personal or emotionally affecting enough in the usual theatrical-device ways.

Dunkirk is about Nolan saying, “Okay, look, of course…I know how to do that kind of film. Anybody can make that kind of proscenium-arch, emotional-bromide war film if they have the funding and know a little something about screenwriting and camera placement. Please understand I am not doing that kind of film out of choice. This is a giant-ass art film. This is a ‘less story and next-to-no-character-detail equals richer cinema’ thing. This is a highly selective, God’s-editing-machine take on a World War II tragedy that actually turned into a heartening thing in actuality.”

Tatyana says it’s really great in terms of visual splendor and the land-sea-air concept “but I didn’t see or feel any characters except for the guy on the boat [i.e., Mark Rylance]…it’s just about people struggling to survive, and it’s awful when people can do nothing or next to nothing to save themselves…so despairing, no content, no emotions or empathy, an empty movie…unlike The 9th Company or Stalingrad, which I quite liked….bombing, bombing, bombing….emotions and involvement are so much more important to me than the shape or size of a screen.”

Thank God for the great Tom Hardy, the Spitfire pilot who mostly performs from behind a pilot’s mask of some kind. It’s the best thing he’s done since Locke.

From Ben Travers’ SXSW review, posted on 3.13.17: “A lot of the responsibility to convince viewers of the film’s authenticity falls to Franco. As Tommy Wiseau, he is the strange, unknowable presence at the center of both The Disaster Artist (A24, 12.1) and The Room, and audiences need to believe this is a real person rather than a caricature.

“[Franco makes this freak] both captivating and alienating at once. No one understands him, not even Greg, and there’s no forced exposition or even implied background to help you believe such a person could really exist. (To be fair, Wiseau’s background is a mystery to this day, but Franco doesn’t even try to solve it.)

“And here is where the director makes a make-or-break choice for the movie: Rather than banish all familiar elements from his performance, he recognizes when Tommy can and can’t be relatable. Now, Tommy is never entirely understandable, but he is a real person. Franco is smart enough to recognize that most people came to know Tommy through The Room — and Johnny, his character in the movie, is not Tommy.

“As The Disaster Artist progresses, you notice the separation in his performance: Franco allows himself to play into the jokes when Tommy is off-camera, and he rejects all of his comedic instincts when filming scenes from The Room. That allows Tommy to be truly funny in order to serve the comedy written into The Disaster Artist. Franco can hit a joke as Tommy, even though Tommy can’t land a punchline on camera to save his life. As Seth Rogen’s character says in the movie, ‘It would be weird for Tommy to do something that’s not weird.'”

Variety‘s Kris Tapley has proclaimed that Christopher Nolan‘s Dunkirk is “the first slam-dunk Oscar contender of 2017.” It’s a Best Picture contender, you betcha, but Nolan’s masterpiece is the second 2017 film to be so honored. The first was Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me By Your Name, and I don’t want to hear any ifs, ands or buts about it. Okay, Nolan’s film is the first 2017 release to so qualify. I saw it tonight with my mouth open. I’m catching it again on a super-sized IMAX screen this weekend. IMAX is the only way to go in this instance.

Hollywood Elsewhere will be catching Chris Nolan‘s Dunkirk early this evening, or exactly five hours after this afternoon’s Detroit screening. I’ll post reactions to the former late this evening or tomorrow morning, but in the meantime: “Steven Spielberg laid claim to the Normandy beach landing, Clint Eastwood owns Iwo Jima, and now, Christopher Nolan has authored the definitive cinematic version of Dunkirk,” writes Variety‘s Peter Debruge.

“Unlike those other battles, however, Dunkirk was…a salvaged retreat, as the German offensive forced a massive evacuation of English troops early in World War II. And unlike those other two directors, Nolan is only nominally interested in the human side of the story as he puts his stamp on the heroic rescue operation, offering a bravura virtual-eyewitness account from multiple perspectives — one that fragments and then craftily interweaves events as seen from land, sea and air.

“Take away the film’s prismatic structure and this could be a classic war picture for the likes of Lee Marvin or John Wayne. And yet there’s no question that the star here is Nolan himself, whose attention-grabbing approach alternates among three strands, chronological but not concurrent, while withholding until quite late the intricate way they all fit together.

“Though the subject matter is leagues (and decades) removed from the likes of Inception and The Dark Knight, the result is so clearly ‘a Christopher Nolan film’ — from its immersive, full-body suspense to the sophisticated way he manipulates time and space — that his fans will eagerly follow en masse to witness the achievement. And what an achievement it is!”

The new Studio Canal Bluray of Federico Fellini‘s La Strada “doesn’t have the grain I was anticipating”….sold! DVD Beaver‘s Gary W. Tooze writing that a remastered Bluray looks too smooth or overly DNR-ed is, I feel, cause for celebration. Plus he adds that this new 1080p version “is much brighter [with] more detail on the bottom, right and left edges…the best I have ever seen the film presented…a must-own Blu-ray, for the film if nothing more.” I just bought thus sucker –$20 and change.

Matt Ruskin‘s Crown Heights (Amazon/IFC, 8.25), a true-life ’80s and ’90s saga of wrongful conviction and incarceration, won the Audience Award for Best Dramatic Features at last January’s Sundance Film Festival. And it stars the very cool Lakeith Stanfield. I tried to call him “Keith” Stanfield in my review of War Machine, in part because his Wikipedia page says so. What if I called myself Lejeff Wells? I’ll tell you what would happen. I’d be called a pathetic copycat.

From Andrew Barker’s 1.23.17 Variety review: “Essentially structured like a reverse Law & Order episode, Crown Heights sketches an effective, if ultimately somewhat schematic, picture of the legal system’s countless crevasses and sinkholes into which a blameless person can easily be shoved.

“It doesn’t break much new ground and it takes a while to find its footing, but thanks to strong, unshowy performances from Lakeith Stanfield and Nnamdi Asomugha, the film does project the feelings of helplessness and frustration that come from fighting against such an immovable object.

“Adapted from a This American Life episode that detailed the case of Colin Warner (Stanfield), who spent 20 years behind bars for murder before being freed in 2001, the movie offers an interesting companion piece to Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th, and ought to receive a look from festivals going forward.”

Cheers to Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, Netflix and director Ritesh Batra on their upcoming film, Our Souls At Night, being selected for a special Venice Film Festival gala. The septugenarian romance will premiere on Friday, 9.1. Could this mean that Redford and Fonda will hit Telluride a day or two later? Souls is their third romantic pairing after Barefoot in the Park (’67) and Electric Horseman (’79). (Nobody counts The Chase, in which they were merely part of a hothouse ensemble.) The sentimental “together again” factor plus the decision to screen Souls out-of-competition amounts to a coded message for Venice critics to tred gently. The Colorado-set film begins on a note of platonic companionship with Fonda’s Addie Moore initiating a no-nookie relationship with Redford’s Louis Waters. The fact that Souls was briefly shot in Florence suggests that things ripen.

Robert Redford, Jane Fonda in Ritesh Batra’s Our Souls At Night (Netflix, sometime in late November)

Sometimes the Aero guys seem to be very attuned, very much in the momentary spiritual swim of things. We’re here and then we’re not here. We’re somewhere else. Maybe. Blink of an eye.

Hugs and condolences for the friends, colleagues and fans of Martin Landau, who’s suddenly gone at age 89. He was a bit of a testy guy in person, I must say. He didn’t suffer fools, or at least didn’t seem all that delighted with journalistic inquiries the two or three times I ran into him during the ’90s. But that goes with being a ferociously committed but somewhat frustrated actor, I guess.

Landau spent much of his career making swill, but he was gifted and lucky enough to hit grandslam homers with two great roles — Judah Rosenthal in Woody Allen‘s Crimes and Misdemeanors (’89 — that scene when he goes back to his old home and speaks to his family during dinner, and especially the one with Jerry Orbach in the pool house) and Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton‘s Ed Wood (’94 — Lugosi tangling with the fake octopus in the pond).

My Landau favorites after these two, and in this order: Rollin Hand in Mission: Impossible (’66 to ’69), sleek and effete Leonard with the “woman’s intuition” in Alfred Hitchcock‘s North by Northwest (’59), Rex Harrison‘s loyal Rufio in Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s Cleopatra (’63), and Lieutenant Marshall in Lewis Milestone‘s Pork Chop Hill (’59). These are the only ones that have stuck in my mind.