“If you make people laugh, it is very hard for them to see you not making them laugh. Every time I do a movie like Moneyball or Wolf of Wall Street or War Dogs, when you do interviews they all say ‘wow, this has been a major transition for you.'” — Jonah Hill speaking to Any Given Wednesday‘s Bill Simmons.

But Jonah has transitioned, completely, into the realm of serious performance-giving and profile-expanding. Yes, playing an assortment of colorful, curious and eccentric guys, for sure, but well beyond the realm of Superbad-level (or Superbad-wannabe) comedies.

You know who I thought might transition into better, more substantial films or at least out of lowbrow comedies but hasn’t? Seth Rogen. For the most part he seems determined to stay in his safe zone. If Rogen was going to “do a Jonah Hill,” he would’ve done it by now. He just keeps making these mildly middlebrow stoner comedies (I loved Pineapple Express, didn’t mind The Interview, meh Neighbors) and letting go with that Rogen laugh and living up to that famous Michael O’Donoghue-ism – “Simply making people laugh is the lowest form of humor.”

The BFI Bluray of Ken Russell‘s Women in Love pops on Monday, 8.22. According to British Amazon I’ll receive it sometime between Wednesday, 8.24 and Friday, 8.26. Because I paid an extra $31 (24 British pounds) for priority shipping. I want a week to savor and settle in with it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this 1969 film in serious tip-top shape, having only caught it once or twice in a Manhattan rep house in the late ’70s or early ’80s.

If Women in Love had never appeared in ’69 and yet was somehow recreated by a fresh creative team and released this fall by Focus Features or Fox Searchlight, it would instantly vault into the Best Picture category. Because nobody and I mean nobody makes brainy period dramas as good as this for the theatrical market any more.

Posted on 2.4.14: Ken Russsell‘s Women in Love (’69), indisputably his greatest film, demands a meticulous high-def remastering, if for no other reason than the cinematography by Billy Williams (Gandhi, On Golden Pond).

“Women is one of the most sensual films ever made about men, women and relationships (and I’m not just talking about the nude wrestling scene between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates), and one of the most anguished in portraying the sadnesses and frustrations that plague so many relationships and marriages.

There was a brief, horrific two- or three-week period last September when it seemed as if Lenny Abrahamson‘s Room, which 90% of female cognoscenti and quite a few girlymen critics adored, might become the emotional favorite and thereby nudge aside Spotlight, which was clearly the cultivated-journo favorite in the wake of Telluride-Toronto, for the Best Picture Oscar.

A ghastly sense of foreboding gripped my soul as I began to realize how strongly many people felt about Room. That anecdote about a woman weeping in the Academy lobby told me it was fait accompli. The prospect of a Room victory felt like a spear in the side. But all of that Best Picture talk went away pretty quickly, didn’t it? Because it became increasingly clear that more people were on my side of the equation, and the Room crowd realized by late October or thereabouts that their only realistic shot was Brie Larson winning the Best Actress Oscar, which of course she did.

But thank God Room was defeated. The world came to its senses! We’ll be stuck with cloying Jacob Tremblay for the next few years (Before I Wake, Shut In, The Book of Henry, Burn Your Maps, Wonder are due in ’16 and ’17) but them’s the breaks.

I was just re-reading my initial Toronto review and the horror just came whooshing right back:

In a CNN.com article filed this morning (Sunday, 8.21) by Barbara Starr, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria, said he hopes the US-led coalition can “defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria in this next year.”

Townsend quickly qualified this ambitious-sounding agenda. “Do I think ISIS will be gone from Iraq and Syria [by the end of ’17]? No. But I want them out of the cities. I want them dead or on the run in a hole somewhere in the desert, and significantly less of a threat.”

I like that, the “dead or in a hole” part. This is how a strong military commander should talk about the enemy. What Townsend said doesn’t quite have the ring of “we’re not just gonna murder those lousy ISIS bastards…we’re going to use their living guts to grease the treads of our tanks,” but he’s on the right track.

If you care to read Ted Chiang‘s “Story Of Your Life,” the 39-page short story that Denis Villenueve‘s Arrival (Paramount, 11.11)is based upon, here it is.

If that sounds too hard, here are excerpts from the Wikipedia synopsis of Chiang’s story, to wit:

“Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is enlisted by the military to communicate with a race of aliens — called Heptapods — who’ve landed on earth and are looking to learn and communicate.

“The Heptapods’ spoken language is known as Heptapod A (harder to learn than Japanese or Czech) while Heptapod B is their written language, Heptapod B has such complex structure that a single semagram (or determinative) cannot be excluded without changing the entire meaning of a sentence.”

Are you getting a feeling that Arrival is going to be a very cerebral experience — i.e., the anti-Independence Day? Which is good, right? Who wants to watch another bonehead alien-invasion flick? Why then do I wish that Jeff Goldblum was costarring in Arrival instead of Forrest Whitaker, who’s always hulking, panting and slurring his words?

For some reason a trailer was recently posted for Julia Marchese‘s Out of Print, a 2014 documentary about West Hollywood’s New Beverly cinema. The 87-minute valentine to 35mm film-geek culture is rentable or buyable on Amazon. Marchese was cut loose from the Beverly sometime in late 2014 when owner Quentin Tarantino brought in new management and instituted a 35mm-only screening policy. I’ve said time and again that I love the fact that the New Beverly is alive and well and showing 35mm, but I don’t care for the theatre (too tunnel-like, too long of a throw) and I don’t relate to the film bums who hang out there.

August is generally a slow time for movie columnists. I therefore understand why New Yorker critic-essayist Richard Brody posted an 8.17 essay about the wonder of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Marnie (’64), which I regard as Hitchcock’s worst by a country mile. Last year I posted two essays that argued with Brody’s astounding thesis that Marnie is, in fact, Hitchcock’s best. (The first appeared on 4.16.15, the second on 7.23.15.) I’ve nothing to add but Brody’s latest Marnie essay can’t go unchallenged.

“Don’t Marnie Me,” 4.15.15: “Three days ago I nearly fell out of my chair when I noticed a Twitter dispute among some Alfred Hitchcock devotees (including occasional HE gadfly Glenn Kenny) about who had been more influential in restoring the reputation of Hitchcock’s Marnie — New Yorker contributor-columnist Richard Brody (a.k.a., tinyfrontrow) or the late Robin Wood, whose fascinating interpretations in his 1965 book “Hitchcock’s Films” did a lot to advance the belief that Hitchcock was a major mainstream artist.

“Given that Marnie is still a ghastly thing to sit through (I tried doing so a couple of years ago), I wasn’t aware that Marnie‘s reputation had ever been restored. But that’s the foo-foo crowd for you, encamped and gathering firewood on their own tight little island.

Last night I joined four friendos (HE’s own Svetlana Cvetko, David Scott Smith, Russian filmmaker Nick Sarkisov and Svet’s visiting niece, Natasha Radisic) for a visit to WeHo’s Improv Cafe, which I hadn’t been to in 22 or 23 years. ($25 a person plus drinks.) The show wasn’t the usual standup stuff but Kevin Smith and Ralph Garman‘s Hollywood Babble-0n, a sitting-down-and shooting-the-shit routine that they perform with some regularity. Agreeable, good-natured, occasional hilarious.

Kevin Smith and Ralph Garman during one of their “Hollywood Babble-on” Improv routines.

(l. to r.) HE homies Natasha Radisic, Svetlana Cvetko, Nick Sarkisov, David Scott Smith.

HE regulars know that for two years (8.02 to 8.04) I wrote a twice-weekly version of the column for Smith’s Movie Poop Shoot site. He paid me a modest salary. I never liked writing for a site with the word “poop” in the URL but I sucked it in and did the job.

I was hanging in Paris in June of ’04 when Kevin called to inform that he had to cut me loose. He said I’d be paid one final month’s salary, covering July. I knew then and there I had to launch and operate HE on my own. I’d have to learn HTML coding and figure out how to sell advertising, but the internet economy was starting to bounce back and I knew it could work.

But I needed more than a month to get things rolling so I called Kevin a week later and asked for an extra month’s salary. And without blinking an eye he said “okay.” That gave me the necessary time to learn what I had to learn and attend to the dozens upon dozens of details that any start-up requires. I’ve never forgotten Smith’s generosity. Let no one say in my presence that he’s not a mensch. From one New Jersey guy to another…cheers.

Received on 8.17 from journalist/critic Lewis Beale, who lives in North Carolina: “I know I’m late with this, but they just screened Hell and High Water here last night. Just terrific. Top-notch on every level: direction, screenplay, acting, sense of place. Great subtext about the economy and predator banks. Chris Pine [is] a real revelation — always liked him, but here he is simply sensational.

“Two great speeches: when Jeff Bridges‘ partner talks about how the white man stole the land from the Indians, and now the banks are stealing it from the white guys; and when Pine talks about how generations of his family living in poverty is like a disease. I loved how the boys’ lawyer knew what they were doing, and encouraged them to set up a trust with the bank’s own money. I loved the two diner scenes — ‘Tell me what you don’t want.’ And those capturings of West Texas and the dead towns — truly depressing.

“One small nit — how did Pine get his gunshot wound taken care of? Any hospital would have reported him immediately. No big deal, though. This is the kind of film America should make more of, instead of the fanboy shit crowding the marketplace.”

Last night I caught an 8:10 pm 3D show of Timur Bekmambetov‘s Ben-Hur. Almost everything about it stinks of mediocrity — the tedious writing, the grayish color scheme, the C-grade cast delivering soap-opera performances, the low-budget vibe despite a reported $100 million having been spent. It’s like a 1987 Golan-Globus version of Ben-Hur starring Michael Dudikoff as Judah and Chuck Norris as Messala…it’s third-tier shit, shit, shit on almost every level.

Okay, the chariot-race sequence isn’t half-bad, I’ll admit. But I hate the way it was shot and cut and the sandy, desaturated color scheme. It doesn’t feel bracingly real-world and super-intense like the legendary 1959 version did — too many close-ups, too much CG, too many flying bodies and flying horses and a truly silly bit when Jack Huston‘s Judah Ben-Hur falls out of his chariot and is dragged by his horses for a good 45 seconds or so. But it delivers in a crazy, cranked-up way.

And I was impressed by an underwater sequence in which Huston is struggling to free himself from a chain looped through a leg iron around his ankle — not bad.

But otherwise, this is one of the lowest, cheesiest, scurviest, lemme-outta-here films made or distributed by a major U.S. studio, ever.

When I read about this thing being made two-plus years ago I knew right away it would be crap, and I was right. Ben-Hur is a rank embarassment, a miserable wipe-out that’s expected to reap a pathetic $12 million by Sunday night.

There were maybe 15 people in the theatre, if that. I took two four-minute breaks, once for the bathroom and a second time to buy a hot dog. I didn’t care what I might miss. I knew when the chariot race would be arriving.

Stodgy and slow-moving as it was, William Wyler’s 1959 version was a big-budgety, A-team effort with first-rate, charismatic actors working with a stiffly phrased but well-honed screenplay. It didn’t feel like a genuine visit to ancient Judea and Rome but you didn’t care because it was a pricey, gleaming, well-spoken enterprise from every angle. The newbie has none of that sturdiness, that atmosphere, that panache, that “we know what you want and what we’re doing because we’re rich, classy guys” attitude. It’s from hunger, from Goodwill.