I did a 20-minute phoner yesterday afternoon with Revenant director Alejandro G. Inarritu. No mention of the “bear rape” thing as I was determined to keep things on a higher plane. We covered several areas. Toward the end I asked if he was going to appeal the recent disqualification of Ryuichi Sakamoto‘s score for Oscar consideration by the Academy’s music branch. Inarritu confirmed this. Here’s an explanation of his somewhat non-traditional approach to the score, which, as I understand it, was to use Bryce Dessner and Alva Noto‘s electronic music for subliminal atmospheric mood sprinklings while Sakamoto’s orchestral score delivered the heart-and-soul current. (Or something like that.) Again, the mp3.

(l. to r.) Forrest Goodluck, Alejandro G. Inarritu, Leonardo DiCaprio at recent Revenant premiere in Los Angeles.

Notes/questions I’d written before speaking with Inarritu: “As long as your heart is beating, as long as you’re able to breathe, you fight to the last.

“Respecting the difference between Emmanuelle Lubezski‘s Alexa 65 photography (which constitutes just under half of The Revenant‘s footage) and Robert Richardson‘s Super Panavision 80 photography for The Hateful Eight.

“How many pelts would be found on such an expedition, and how much money would each trapper get? Why winter? Why not go out in search of pelts in the spring and summer? The horse, I presume, was manufactured, along with the intestines and stomach and liver and whatnot. Did Leo wear a wetsuit under his trapper clothing?

“I don’t know that The Revenant delivers a theme that echoes my own life except in terms of the necessity of strength and persistence throughout all the difficult episodes. What I know and believe is that this is a film that has taken me where I’ve never been, and in a much more realistic and enveloping way. The Argentina portion was the final Leo & Domhnall Gleeson vs. Tom Hardy battle. That magnificent promotional book — whose idea? How long did it take? Those imitation daguerrotypes are perfect.

It’s a shame this wasn’t done quite right — no music, no high-impact CAROL beginning, the crawl starting at least 10 or 12 seconds late. If anyone has access to the original, please forward. Hilarious sidenote: Rooney Mara‘s Therese Belevet character renamed “Therese Bela Fett.”

An early teaser for Star Wars: The Force Awakens began with an older woman’s voice asking “who are you?” and Rey (Daisy Ridley) answering “I’m no one.” Correct me if I’m wrong but this dialogue isn’t heard in the actual film…right? Sidenote: Here‘s Carmen Tse’s LAist story (posted yesterday afternoon) about the Arclight digital meltdown freakout.

Today Hateful Eight star Kurt Russell was asked by the View gals about that gun-control discussion he and I got into two weeks ago. Here’s what he said. Russell claimed that I “ambushed” him. If that means I asked him a question that had a slight connection to the real world as opposed to the usual blah-blah suckuppy bullshit that everyone asks movie stars at press junkets, then I am definitely guilty as charged. And yet all I did was mention a N.Y. Times piece by N.R. Kleinfeld that indicated people are badly shaken by Paris and San Bernardino, and that they may not be processing arch Tarantino-style violence these days the way they did back in the Pulp Fiction/Jackie Brown days. Kurt also told the View guys that films like The Hateful Eight are “fantasy land” — wrong. All strong movies are echoes and reflections of the culture and the times. And before anyone accuses me of milking this for the umpteenth time, I’m simply responding to the View thing. In the clip Russell’s remarks start at 3:30 and end at 5:55.

Hulu’s 11.22.63 will begin streaming on 2.15.16, but does that mean the whole thing will be available, House of Cards-style? It was recently announced that the two-hour opener, directed by Kevin McDonald, will debut at Sundance ’16. Star James Franco and costars Sarah Gadon, Daniel Webber, George MacKay, Josh Duhamel and Chris Cooper will sit for a post-screening q & a.

James Franco, Sarah Gadon during a grassy knoll sequence from 11.22.63.

The song on the trailer is Bobby Vinton‘s Over and Over, “a B-side from 1962 so rare it’s never been digitized or even issued on CD or cassette before,” according to Hulu. “The master recording was unarchived and digitized by Sony records specifically for this trailer.”

Nine foreign-language features are on the short list for the 88th Academy Awards. The list will be pruned down to five nominees by three committees (based in New York, Los Angeles and London) after they watch the film between Friday, 1.8 and Sunday, 1.10, and then decide which four to cut. The Big Nine: The Brand New Testament (Belgium), d: Jaco Van Dormael; Embrace of the Serpent (Colombia), d: Ciro Guerra; A War (Denmark), d: Tobias Lindholm; The Fencer (Finland), d: Klaus Haäro; Mustang (France), d: Deniz Gamze Erguven; Labyrinth of Lies (Germany), d: Giulio Ricciarelli; Son of Saul (Hungary), d: Laszlo Nemes; Viva (Ireland), d: Paddy Breathnach; Theeb (Jordan), d: Naji Abu Nowar.

It was announced yesterday that Sundance ’16 will offer a premiere of Douglas McGrath‘s Becoming Mike Nichols, “an intimate portrait of the director, producer, and improvisational comedy icon…filmed just months before his death…McGrath documents Nichols’s early life as he opens up to his friend and director Jack O’Brien about the storied beginnings of his career.”

The bulk of the doc (which debuts exclusively on HBO on 2.22) is drawn from a two-day interview with Nichols in the summer of 2014. The film has been executive produced by, among others, critic-essayist Frank Rich.

From my 11.20.14 obit: “Some are truly gifted, and if those in that small, choice fraternity are tenacious and lucky and sometimes scrappy enough, they get to develop their gift and turn what they have inside into works that matter for people of all stripes and philosophies. And then there are those gifted types who are fortunate enough to catch a certain inspiration at the right point in their lives, which turns into a wave that carries and defines their finest work for all time to come. This was how things pretty much went for the late and great Mike Nichols.

A couple days ago a piece by N.Y. Post contributor Johnny Oleksinski lamented the absence of the spiritual undercurrent that he recalls from (choke, gag, loogie) the prequels. A ballsy thing to say and yes, I understand what he’s half-getting at but still…yeesh. The overwhelming mantra during Monday night’s post-premiere party was “definitely better than the prequels,” and already Oleksinski is trying to spark nostalgia sentiment for that godawful trilogy? It wouldn’t matter to me if holograms of Jesus, Buddha and Krishna were to issue a prequel endorsement manifesto. The presence of Jar-Jar, Hayden Christensen and Jake Lloyd automatically erase any spiritual currents, now and forever. End of discussion.

“[While] watching director J.J. Abrams’ smug revamp of one of the highest-grossing movie franchises in history, I found myself missing the loathed prequels,” Oleksinski writes. “Or, at least, thinking of them in a more positive light than before. Like an ex after midnight. Sure, they had problems — Jar Jar Binks, midi-chlorians, staid dialogue, Count Dooku. As movies they fail, often spectacularly. But the scorned prequels got one big thing right — the intangible Star Wars spirit. They oozed mythology, gravitas, nonstop momentum and unwavering earnestness — hallmarks of the series at its best. With The Force Awakens, Abrams has made a slight, self-aware, low-stakes movie [that] borrows from the original trilogy with abandon — but in all the wrong ways.”

Even with money to burn in my sleep I would feel badly about forking over $8 grand for Haier Asia’s R2-D2 moving refrigerator. If I was loaded I might cough up a grand for something like this but $8K? (Does JJ Abrams have one in his Bad Robot complex?) Much of the cost of the Haier unit, which was profiled yesterday by cnet.com) has to do with a) Lucasfilm licensing fees, (b) the mobility factor (it travels around 1km per hour) and (c) the 720p HD digital projection capability (“Help me, Obiwan Kenobi — I need a brewski”). The unit will be on display during January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (1.6 thru 1.9).

My first thought was to wait until Stars Wars: The Force Awakens had at least played for a full 12-hour day, but obviously the Thursday night surge was huge so have at it — the forum is open. Most of the responses have been fairly euphoric, but the Thursday nighters are devoted believers and therefore easy lays. I’ll be listening more closely to the Friday and Saturday night crowds, and especially those with the character to cool their jets, bide their time and wait until Sunday. Here’s a Newsday video that was posted last night.

The good…okay, the interesting news is that Criterion will release a digitally restored Bluray based on a 4K harvest of John Frankenheimer‘s The Manchurian Candidate (’62) on 3.15.16. The bad news is that they’ve decided to chop the aspect ratio down to 1.75, which will deliver a bit less height than the 1.66 that’s been the home video standard for many years.

Would it do any good to say I’ve seen Candidate projected at 1.66:1 and that it looks beautiful that way? I can’t swear to it, but I recall that the MGM/UA laser disc of Candidate had a 1.66 a.r., and I know for an absolute damn fact that 1.66 was used for the MGM/UA laser disc of Frankenheimer’s The Train.

More height is always right. How does it add to The Manchurian Candidate‘s visual allure to slice off a portion of the top of the image? I’ve never understood this sick impulse and I don’t want to understand it. Perverse and inexplicable.

Yes, I might buy the Criterion version but only because I love the design of the cover jacket. Is there really going to be a substantive image-quality difference between the ’04 Bluray and the Criterion? Maybe if you have an 80″ or 100″ screen but I wonder if I’m really going to see a whopping difference on my 60″ Samsung.

Did anyone like or even see Jared Hess‘s Don Verdean, which popped 12.11 on VOD? I caught it 11 months ago at Sundance ’15 and said the following (and yes, I know I’ve posted this a couple of times since): “I wanted to at least quietly enjoy this satire of rightwing religious foolery and fraudulence. But it just wouldn’t let me go there, and I’m saying this as a fan of Sam Rockwell, who plays the titular character — a bullshit archeologist and discoverer of Biblical relics. The only good thing is New Zealand-based actor-comedian Jermaine Clement, who plays Boaz, a corruptible Israeli guide.” Costarring Amy Ryan, Leslie Bibb, Will Forte and the demonic Danny McBride. Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) directed and co-wrote somebody from his family with the first name of “Jerusha.”