It’s way too wet and miserable outside — too damn miserable for me. Indoor huddling is the only viable option.

Two days ago (5.4) on Home Theatre Forum, restoration guru Robert Harris gave a failing grade to Paramount Home Video’s 4K UHD Bluray of John Ford‘s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (’62).

“While much of the home theater crowd is probably going to love what Paramount has done here, I’m hating everything that I’m seeing. The image is very clean and stable. Beautiful black & white, and [in some ways] reminiscent of the way that it looked on film.

“And yet this isn’t film, and looks nothing like it, even though with 4k UHD we’re able to get closer to and not further away from the real thing.

William H. Clothier‘s cinematography “has been totally de-grained, making it look like some sort of low-end data, and then smeared with video noise in an apparent nod toward those who desire that ‘film’ look.

“But here’s the rub. It’s not just that the image has been de-grained, but either somewhere in the de-graining or digital clean-up, swirling patterns of amoebae have been rendered in skies and neutral areas, and they swim about, presumably having fun.”

HE comment: I’m presuming that these “swirling patterns of amoeba” are roughly similar to the digital grainstorm effect (i.e., swarms of digital Egyptian mosquitoes) that I’ve been complaining about for years.

Back to Harris: “Sometimes the noise appears almost normal. Almost believable. Sometimes it goes away entirely, and is fully grainless. Sometimes it turns into them swirling creatures.

“The legend is that Paramount is capable of doing beautiful restoration work. I’m thinking back to the work from the likes of Ron Smith. I no longer believe it, but what the heck…’Print the legend.’ Upgrade from Blu-ray? Absolutely not. An unfortunate rendering, except for those who don’t like the look of cinema.”

Amanda Gorman‘s “Eight Reasons To Stand Up.” Most of us recall the 24 year-old Gorman delivering a poem, “The Hill We Climb”, at Joe Biden‘s inauguration on 1.20.21 — 14 days after the Capitol insurrection.

But otherwise splendid — the first impressionist medley of running styles I’ve ever seen online.

From “What Happens After That,” a New Yorker article about Alfred Hitchcock, written by Russell Maloney and dated 9.2.38:

“Whether he works in Hollywood or England, Hitchcock will go on making his own kind of picture. His mind is full of plans; nothing else can get in. When he was last in New York he wasn’t half so concerned about his financial negotiations as about a story idea he had.

“‘The picture would open near the London docks, at dawn,’ he explained. ‘The police are chasing a lascar sailor down a grain elevator. He gets away from them, runs through the gates into the road, and finally hides in a sailors’ boarding house. The police catch up with him, and he escapes from them again. The chase goes through the Sunday morning market in Middlesex Street.

“At last the lascar comes to St. Paul’s Cathedral and runs in, with the police after him. There’s a service going on, so he runs upstairs to the balcony that goes around the dome. Just as he reaches the top step he falls over the railing down into the nave, dead, with a knife in his back. Some of the congregation rush up and turn him over. One of them touches his face and a smudge of blacking comes off. The man isn’t a lascar at all — he’s just made up as one.”

“At this point in his recitation Hitchcock became subdued. Then he said, ‘It’s good so far. But what happens after that? I wish I knew.'”

Anthony Lane‘s New Yorker review of Sam Raimi‘s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness delivers not just an explicit warning, but a confirmation of what I’ve been sensing from the get-go, and why I decided against attending last Monday’s all-media screening in Los Angeles.

Doctor Strange “may do temporary damage to your central nervous system,” Lane writes, “yet it’s not unenlightening. For one thing, it clarifies the purpose of a multiverse. (I was startled to find the word being used by the poet and critic Allen Tate almost a century ago, in 1923: ‘I suppose Keats was insincere in his letters because he exposes a multiverse.’ Don’t tell the Scarlet Witch.)

“This has nothing to do with astrophysical speculation and plenty to do with the special-effects teams, for whom the multiverse means party time. It gives them carte blanche—which never bodes well—to dish up anything they fancy. The one smidgen of wit, as opposed to visual overkill, is the sight of a storm in an actual teacup, complete with raging waves.

“Raimi’s movie could also be of interest to sociologists. What stirred the fans around me, causing them to levitate in their seats, was not the film’s emotional sway (for it has none) but the miraculous visitation of characters from other Marvel flicks, many of them played by embarrassed-looking British actors, whose every entrance was met with ejaculations of joy.

“The cinema, at such moments, becomes a place of worship. I sat there, strewn with popcorn rubble, lost in the liturgy, jealous of the true believers, and baffled by their incomprehensible gods.”

The outcry triggered by the Frank Langella Fall of the House of Usher incident — i.e., getting whacked for mild crossing-the-line offenses — boils down to an issue of degree. How to deal with questionable on-set behavior that isn’t that bad within the greater scheme of things?

Nobody wants silence or indifference if an actress believes she’s been violated to some degree, even if the violation was a matter of small potatoes. If an actor does something that most of us would regard as vaguely uncool while performing a scene, appropriate measures should ensue. The vague offender should be taken aside and told in respectful but direct terms to stop being vaguely uncool or overly familiar or whatever the complaint is about. If an actor is any kind of pro they’ll listen and acknowledge and adapt.

But when is it appropriate for an actress with a legit complaint to “go nuclear” over a relatively minor transgression? That’s what Langella’s costar allegedly did — she “walked off the set” and didn’t return, according to Langella’s account.

This is also what Keke Palmer allegedly did when costar Bill Murray pulled her pigtail (or something in that general nyuk-nyuk, horsing-around realm) on the set of Being Mortal. Palmer was apparently inconsolable and is possibly still feeling that way. How else to interpret the fact that Being Mortal was shut down two weeks ago (on 4.20.22) and yet producers still haven’t announced that the film is resuming production? How many weeks of fretting does an actress need to recover from on-set joshing around when the josher has solemnly apologized?

Under these circumstances was “going nuclear” really necessary? Any professional actor will confirm that there’s a certain take-it-as-it-comes, turn-the-other-cheek, rough-and-tumble quality that comes with working with other thesps under the usual professional pressures. Something unexpected or unwelcome might occasionally happen, but sometimes it’s the better part of wisdom to just roll with that shit, as in water off a duck’s ass.

As we speak the presumption is that Langella may now be regarded as a risky hire (if not a cautionary tale by way of persona non grata) because of what “happened.”

But ask yourself this: If you were a producer would you want to hire an actress who has gone nuclear over her leg being touched or being hugged or having heard an off-color joke of some kind? Put another way, if you were a producer could you imagine saying to your casting colleagues, “You know that interesting actress whose complaint led to a temporary shutdown of a Netflix show and re-casting a major role and re-shooting weeks’ worth of material? I really want to hire her for my next film. She just has a certain quality that is perfect for a certain character. What do you guys think?”

And what about the idea of an actor submitting to the reality of a character and going with that, at least as far as a scene in question is concerned? The offended actress was playing the “young wife” of Langella’s Roderick Usher character, right? Let’s imagine what Langella and the actress in question were professionally obliged to imagine on that fateful day (3.25.22) — that Usher and his wife are real people involved in an actual marriage, and involved in some sort of physically intimate moment.

If you were Rodrick Usher’s wife would you freak out if your husband touched your leg or gave you a hug or said something a little bit rude or uncalled for? All marriages encounter rough patches and dicey situations, and a certain flexibility or tolerance is necessary to weather them.