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A MOMA-supplied 35mm Technicolor print of King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun (‘46) screened this afternoon at the Lincoln Center Film Society’s Walter Reade theatre, and man oh man oh man…they got me.

The images were so dark and murky you could only see about half of what had been captured by dps Lee Garmes, Ray Rennehan and Harold Rosson. The rest, it seemed, was hiding in shadows, smeared with lentil soup, covered by a scrim.

Even the brightly lighted Technicolor Selznick logo sequence (the Gone With The Wind Bluray delivers a perfect rendering) looked like it was shot during a solar eclipse.

I was told by management that it wasn’t a case of poor illumination (the projectionist told a theatre employee that the image was lit by 16 foot lamberts) but a dark–ass print. Besides the lack of sharpness (the clarity difference between Duel and GWTW is like night and day), the cinematography had a generally thick and heavy quality. Nothing looked beautiful; it was horrendous.

I got up and left around the 40-minute mark. “Why am I watching this?” I muttered to myself. “I feel like I’m going blind.”

These DVD Beaver screen captures from a 2017 Kino Bluray simulate the difference between a properly illuminated Duel in the Sun image (above) vs. how it looked inside the Walter Reade (below) — the projected images actually looked worse than this.

The projected main title sequence looked dark and muddy — it didn’t pop in the slightest. This is how it should have looked (but didn’t):

I struck up an acquaintance with Michael Mann in the summer of ‘97, when I was working as an in-house People freelancer. He knew I was a fanatical longtime fan, etc. One afternoon Mann invited me over for a brief sitdown at his office (Olympic near Bundy), and it was strictly about feeling me out. No quotes or notes.

It was right in the first cautious blush of that relationship that Mann allowed me to look at a James Dean screen test that Leonardo DiCaprio performed in ‘93. It was filmed footage on a VHS cassette, and Leo was wearing a red Rebel Without A Cause jacket and ‘50s Brylcream pompadour hair.

The deal was that I couldn’t mention to anyone (not even my mother) that I’d seen it, and there could certainly be no filing of any kind.

I agreed, of course, but I was so knocked out by how well DiCaprio had captured Dean’s expressions during his big scene with Jo Van Fleet in East of Eden (‘55)…I was so turned around that it broke my heart to have to sit on my impressions forever. But now that Mann has discussed the DiCaprio-Dean thing in a chat with Deadline ‘s Michael Fleming, it seems okay to mention my quick peek.

Or more precisely, Christoph Waltz as Blofeld in No Time To Die. That was my first association. I’m sorry but the ogre-ish Cyclops vibe (i.e., not Gene Hackman in Superman) does something to me. Nobody has ever approved of Trump’s hair, but this proves he needs some kind of dramatic hair statement to make it all work. (I’d like to credit the CG guy who composed this but I’ve lost track of the original.)

Industry friendo sez…

It’s fairly unusual — make that highly unusual — when an apparently gifted actress comes along who qualifies as (am I allowed to even say this?) strikingly beautiful.

Like Emma Mackey, I mean — 26 years old, most recently seen in Eiffel (’21) and Death on the Nile (’22), and soon to be appreciated in Emily, an Emily Bronte biopic that will debut at TIFF ’22.

Captivating brunette actresses were standard issue throughout the 20th Century (they were often favored for their looks back then…a tactic of sexist oppression) but that aesthetic began to fade 10 or 15 years ago. Or so it seemed to me. I won’t argue about this.

To my eyes Mackey is one-third Jamie Pressly, one-third Jaqueline Bisset in her ’70s heyday and one third Lesley-Anne Down as she appeared in the ’70s.

Jodie Comer may or may not be a better actress than Mackey, but she’s cut from a similar cloth.

…but I’ve watched this San Sebastián wave smartphone video a good 20 times (probably more) and it makes me chuckle every time. It’s not the engulfing of the couple with the baby or the squat older guy with a black cap — it’s the excited Asian guy taking the footage — the wave hits him like a combination damburst and avalanche, and he goes down like a bowling pin…hilarious.

The 53 year-old actress, who endured a ghastly childhood due to a beastly father, has passed from traumatic injuries sustained earlier this week. Hugs, sadness, drama to the last. What a way to go.