Now this is one fetching Cuban cover. It looks like dessert or afternoon sex. The hot red letters, Rihanna’s intense red hair, the chipped-paint wall of beige-tan with just a touch of mustard, the almost teal-green classic car, the faded green of her outfit…beautiful. I’ll be buying this new issue of Vanity Fair today or tomorrow, and I’ll plop it down on my aged wooden chest in front of my big blue couch, and if recent tradition is any guide I’ll probably never get around to reading it. I always buy it intending to read the whole thing front to back, but somehow I never do.

I’ve been buying Vanity Fair for 30 years now. I can’t precisely pinpoint when I stopped reading it, but sometime within the last couple of years. Mainly because I’m always checking twitter or writing when I sit down at home. I used to read Vanity Fair on coast-to-coast flights but now I spend all my time online, writing or researching column stories.

On top of which the articles have began to seem a little less substantial with more of an emphasis on girly, frothy, fashiony stuff.  Or people I can’t stand to look at.  I know that I hate the all-fashion issue. I’m not saying VF has become a kind of lah-lah magazine that celebrates (or tries to instill a fascination with) wealth and fashion and loaded people who are spending their money on increasingly peculiar or arcane things. But it feels like it’s kinda going in that direction.  More and more jaded crap.

I’ve seen Stanley Kubrick and Kirk Douglas‘s Spartacus at least 15 if not 20 times, and in all kind of formats — big-screen celluloid projection, broadcast, VHS, Criterion laser disc, DVD and the discredited 2010 “shiny” Bluray that Universal issued five years ago. (And which I somewhat shamefully half-approved of for the simple reason that it looked much better than the 480p Criterion DVD.) Two days ago Universal’s new restored Bluray arrived in the mail, and I swear to God it’s never looked this needle-sharp and natural. It’s a digital knockout, and clean as a hound’s tooth. The difference between this newbie and the 2010 version is analogous to the difference between a run-of-the-mill DVD and a Bluray of anything. It really pops. I felt as if I was watching something almost “new.”

I’m told that every frame has a full measure of grain but I can’t see so much as a single Egyptian mosquito. We all know what grainstorms can look like, and this puppy has none of that. Plus there is extra information on all four sides, and the skin tones and shades of everything look completely natural and unforced. This is the Spartacus of the Gods — robust and radiant and more wowser, I’ll bet, than it’s ever looked, even when Douglas, Kubrick and producer Edward Lewis had a final looksee before the New York premiere in November 1960.

Respect and farewell to Kevin Corcoran, the pint-sized actor in various Walt Disney flicks and serials — Toby Tyler, Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog, Swiss Family Robinson, Pollyanna, Adventures in Dairyland, Savage Sam — who went on to work behind the camera in various capacities. Corcorcan, 66, died two days ago from colorectal cancer in Burbank. Tough break. “Every day above ground is a good day.” — Mel Bernstein (Harris Yulin) in Brian DePalma‘s Scarface.

I know that young girl, or I knew her, I should say. Because she was me. Like Marcello Mastroianni, I left her standing on the beach a long time ago. We all do this sooner or later. Obviously not an occasion for celebration. Resignation is more like it.

As much as I enjoyed last night’s Academy discussion between Guillermo del Toro and Kerry Brougher, I enjoyed listening to these clips of GDT’s remarks from a visit to YouTube Space LA three weeks ago even more. Del Toro sat with Tony Valenzuela (I’m soprry but I have a problem with anyone who wear mandals) to discuss…well, the topics in sequential order are (a) dealing with limitations, (b) comment-thread haters and (c) assholes on the set.

“For many of us going to movies is like going to church. We go over and over and most of the time you don’t get very much, but it’s all worth it when a movie delivers the great beauty and the transcendence and the kiss of God, like from a great sermon. And that single ectstatic episode — that fix — is enough to keep us going back for years to come.”

(l. to r.) Michael Mann, Guillermo Del Toro and director of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Kerry Brougher prior to lastnight’s event — “In The Labyrinth: A Conversation with Guillermo Del Toro.”

This was the Guillermo del Toro quote that stayed with me as I shuffled out of last night’s discussion between the legendary director and interviewer Kerry Brougher at the AMPAS auditorium (i.e., the Samuel Goldwyn theatre).

The talk started out problematically with Brougher kissing Del Toro’s ass over and over, but eventually he let GDT have the floor and after that everything was fine. There is really no one more articulate, perceptive and spiritually imbued than Mr. Del Toro on the subject of film. Or any any subject. But we all know this. The discussion last for just over 90 minutes, and that was exactly right.

I saw GDT’s latest, Crimson Peak (Universal, 10.16), several weeks ago and will post my reaction next week sometime. It’s one of the most exquisitely painted and meticulously composed grand guignol orgies I’ve ever experienced, and I say that as someone who…well, who’s not as much into grand guignol orgies as others. Quite red, quite mad, quite sumptuous.

I’m sure that David O. Russell‘s Joy was research-screened tonight in Los Angeles, but beyond that I don’t know a thing. I can say that the response so far…let’s see, how to put this…is it okay if I say the response from…what, two or three guys is encouraging? I don’t know anyone. It’s obviously wiser to just wait and cool my jets, but here’s one Awards Watch guy (and please take this with a grain): “OMFG CRYING ON THE STREET! Career-best work from DOR and JLAW. Larson who? JLAW was giving Winter’s Bone-level intensity x1000, nothing like Rosalyn or Tiffany so bye h8ers and naysayers! She carried [the] film like a motherfucking champ, IMHO. It’s such a director’s film and I think a culmination of everything from DOR’s career so far plus more. IMHO majority of it is drama (not sure if that’s how they’ll campaign it), but my God…like it almost didn’t seem like a DOR film but at the same time, it’s so much so his film. It’s very weird. It wasn’t the final cut so a lot of sound mixing still needs to be done. But wowza indeed. Bob was good, Isabella was good, Ladd was ok (like Jackie Weaver SLP ok), Ramirez was good. Madsen was great, I thought.”

10:20 Update: A summary post from Award Watch‘s Eric Anderson — take it with a grain.

Thanks to Obscured Pictures‘ R.J. Millard for inviting Hollywood Elsewhere to attend the 2015 Middleburg Film Festival (10.22 thru 10.25). I’m going for three reasons. One, I haven’t visited rural Virginia in eons. Two, Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday tells me the festival is a “really nice hang.” And three, the films (including Spotlight, Meg Ryan‘s Ithaca, Son of Saul, Carol, Truth, 45 Years, Anomalisa) have been well chosen. They’re the consensus movies that anyone of taste and discretion who hasn’t attended the big fall festivals (Venice, Telluride, Toronto) would want to see. Yes, I’ve seen most of them but still.

A 10.27.13 Washington Post piece by Jen Chaney called Middleburg “a festival with the vibe of a hyper-miniature, horse country Park City, Utah…a really itty-bitty Cannes brightened by fall foliage instead of the glistening French Riviera.”

Why Middleburg? Because BET co-founder and billionaire Sheila Crump Johnson wants attention for the Salamander Resort, which she owns and which is located just outside of town. Hosting a bunch of film people (including journalist freeloaders like myself) is a good way of attracting business by selling people on the idea of Middleburg being a moneyed, honeyed, cultured, quasi-hip destination for people who can, you know, afford it.

Time Out: “Can you imagine doing another Bond movie?” Daniel Craig: “Now? I’d rather break this glass and slash my wrists. No, not at the moment. Not at all. That’s fine. I’m over it at the moment. We’re done. All I want to do is move on.” Time Out: “You want to move on from Bond for good?” Craig: ‘I haven’t given it any thought. For at least a year or two, I just don’t want to think about it. I don’t know what the next step is. I’ve no idea. Not because I’m trying to be cagey. Who the fuck knows? At the moment, we’ve done it. I’m not in discussion with anybody about anything. If I did another Bond movie, it would only be for the money.”

I was almost flabbergasted to discover that Ken Russell‘s Women in Love (’69) still has no Bluray and isn’t streamable on high-def. I don’t know what the hang-up is, but this is obviously a prime candidate for the Criterion or Kino treatment. This is a major landmark in the annals of sensuous cinema (the nude wrestling and fig-eating scenes alone) and one of the most anguished portrayals of the sadnesses and frustrations that plague so many relationships and marriages. One of the most exquisitely designed, profoundly transporting period films ever made. D.H. Lawrence‘s novel adapted by Larry Kramer (yes, the Larry Kramer) and co-produced by Kramer and Martin Rosen. Arguably contains the greatest screen performances ever by Alan Bates, Glenda Jackson and Oliver Reed. (Jennie Linden, who quit acting, is also quite memorable.) Photographed by Billy Williams (Sunday Bloody Sunday, Gandhi, The Wind and the Lion). I last complained about the absence of a high-def version in February 2014, and I will most likely complain again 20 months from now if the situations remains static.

A guy who attended a 9.15 DGA research screening of Quentin Tarantino‘s The Hateful Eight has told me a few more things. I was particularly pleased to hear that in addition to being projected in old-fashioned Ultra Panavision 70 (2.76 to 1) that The Hateful Eight, which ran just over three hours, will be shown with an overture and an intermission in the film’s “roadshow” engagements, which will number about 100 screens.

I won’t share the guy’s opinion of the film except to say he’s calling it “an Agatha Christie mystery mixed with a western and filtered through QT.” I can also divulge that the sex scene mentioned yesterday doesn’t involve Jennifer Jason Leigh but Samuel L. Jackson. That’s all I’m going to say.

One comment: “During the post-screening q & a Tarantino was confronted by an African-American audience member about [what the questioner felt was an] excessive use of the n-word. I could be wrong but this flick has the most n-bombs of all his movies, and its frequency is used as a source of humor. But in this hyper-sensitive, p.c. flash mob environment we currently live in I could see this as being a real problem for Tarantino this time around.