Last April I caught an American Cinematheque screening of the original cut of Thom Andersen‘s L.A. Plays Itself (’03). I was happy to see it again, of course, but the visual quality was basically shit and it was of course dated by a decade. It reminded me that it was time for Andersen to deliver an updated, remastered version. That new version screened last night at the same venue. Here’s a Arts Meme mini-review by Robert Koehler. A make-up screening at the Aero would be nice. Or at least a chance to watch a DVD screener.

“I was totally bowled over by 12 Years a Slave and it looks to me like the rare case where a sentimental or politically-motivated vote will go toward a film that, you know, actually deserves it,” says Peter Knegt in a 9.20 Indiewire piece called “Has 12 Years a Slave Already Won the Oscar?” “It’s hard to deny the narrative this year of decent (Lee Daniels’ The Butler) to good (Fruitvale Station) to downright brilliant (12 Years a Slave) films with important black stories being directed by actual black filmmakers. Which I say only because so many times over the years, films with major black characters have been huge Oscar contenders (Driving Miss Daisy and Crash being the obvious two), but they were representationally problematic ones directed by white dudes. If this is the year of the black filmmaker, Steve McQueen is a remarkable one — who is wholly deserving of what’s about to come his way.”

I recognize that Denis Villeneuve‘s Prisoners has won the devotion of the elites. I recognize that the damp, sprawling Fincher-like aspects of the damn thing are very appealing to a certain breed of critic. But for me and others in my aesthetic realm it feels more like a dense slog than anything else, and I think it might be nice at this juncture to gather all the complaints (like the 153-minute length and that “what?” ending) under one umbrella and kick the can around. All I know is that I began looking at my watch around the one-hour mark. All through Prisoners I felt weary and chilly and fatigued. “If this is such a good film — and it is — why do I feel like a prisoner myself?,” I muttered at one point.

Time‘s Richard Corliss acknowledges that while Prisoners “has more pedigree than a Westminster dog-show winner, it’s just not very good. In fact, it’s worse than not-very-good — it’s could’ve-been-really-good-and-isn’t.”

It’s generally agreed that Nashville (’75) is one of Robert Altman‘s three best films, the other two being M.A.S.H. (’69) and The Player (’92). (In my eyes Altman’s golden six are these three plus California Split, McCabe and Mrs. Miller and The Long Goodbye.) Nashville is also regarded as a cornerstone of ’70s cinema, and yet for some odd reason I’ve never seen it since catching it at the Carnegie Hall Cinema in ’79 or thereabouts. There’s a reason for that but what? When I think of the film four bits always come to mind — Henry Gibson singing “Two Hundred Years,” Jeff Goldblum tooling around on a three-wheeled motorcycle, Keith Carradine singing “I’m Easy” and whatsername getting shot in the end. In any event I’m ripe for a re-viewing when the Criterion Bluray streets in early December.

Denis Villenueve‘s Prisoners (Warner Bros., 9.20) “has been a little over-hyped by critics,” I wrote on 8.31 from Telluride. “Don’t get me wrong — this is a moody, meandering, well-crafted thriller by a director who’s obviously a cut or two above the norm. It’s anything but standard issue. Set in the grimmest, coldest, rainiest part of Bumblefuck, Pennsylvania, the story (written by Aaron Guzikowski) is about the kidnapping of two young girls and the efforts of a lone-wolf cop (Jake Gyllenhaal) and the girls’ vigilante-minded dads (Hugh Jackman and to a lesser extent Terrence Howard) to find them. Not in synch, of course.

West 54th just west of Sixth Avenue. Taken this morning — Friday, 9.20 — at 11:25 am.

Every year a Hollywood Foreign Press Association committee decides that this or that award-quality film should be categorized as a comedy or musical. Their calls are sometimes bizarre, to put it mildly. A story by Hollywood Reporter award-season columnist Scott Feinberg says that Blue Jasmine, for example, will end up in a Musical/Comedy slot because it costars “funnymen” Alec Baldwin, Louis C.K. and Andrew Dice Clay. This for a film that is clearly modelled upon and in many ways resembles A Streetcar Named Desire, one of the great dramatic tragedies of the 20th Century.

Feinberg also foresees the HFPA labelling Before Midnight, Frances Ha, Inside Llewyn Davis, Nebraska and Philomena as comedies — the standard apparently being that if characters in the above films say anything snippy or snarky or sardonic or smartly allusive (which they do on occasion)…anything that results in a slight chortle or guffaw during a screening…they’re comedic. June Squibb briefly flashes her privates in Nebraska? It’s a comedy. The snooty Steve Coogan makes a few smart cracks at Judy Dench‘s expense in Philomena? It’s a laugh riot. I’ve at least agreed with the HFPA in one respect — Joel and Ethan Coen‘s A Serious Man (’09) is definitely a comedy.

I would describe myself as a fairly good guy to have around when it comes to light carpentry and trimming trees (I worked as a tree surgeon in my 20s) and painting interiors and crawling under homes and stapling insulation to the floorboards and moving furniture. I’m not much for changing tires, but otherwise I’m pretty good at being handy and can therefore recognize this in others. And if you ask me Josh Brolin has a steady, authoritative “man of the house” manner in Jason Reitman‘s Labor Day. His character is probably a little too gentle and refined and devoted to baking pies for someone who’s done time for manslaughter, okay, but I believed in that anchored, down-to-it, let’s-get-this-done vibe. I wasn’t exactly doing cartwheels after catching this Paramount release in Telluride, but Brolin’s performance compensated to some extent.

The first U.S.-market trailer for this 10.25 Sundance Selects release is very nicely edited — all gliding moods and smooth weaves and ripe emotional fruit. Tip of the hat to the person[s] who put it together.

I knew what IOS7 was going to look like (my son Jett installed a Beta test version of it months ago) but I’m not having too many problems with it. It’s just taking some getting used to. A lot of people are angry, pissed, shocked but I’m taking my time with it, letting it settle in, rolling with it, learning the new moves. The only thing I hate and got rid of right away was the four-digit pass code that the new software requested. After punching that code six or seven times I 86’ed that shit.

In Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity (Warner Bros., 10.4), Sandra Bullock plays an astronaut, Dr. Ryan Stone, struggling with a do-or-die situation that’s initially beyond her technical abilities. When high-speed debris destroys a space shuttle she’s manning with two others (including George Clooney‘s Matt Kowalski, a space-flight veteran), Stone not only has to survive with limited air but somehow return to earth — a tough order. In this sense Bullock is playing (I know how this sounds but it’s true) a variation on Doris Day‘s role in Julie (a terrified stewardess has to man the controls of a plane that has lost its pilot and co-pilot) and Karen Black‘s in Airport ’75 (a terrified stewardess has to fly a crew-less 747 before Charlton Heston can board and land it). Gravity is miles above and beyond these two mediocre films, technically as well as dramatically, so I’m not trying to diminish Cuaron’s film by making this comparison. Gravity is a brilliant experience. But Bullock is essentially playing, like Black and Day did earlier, a novice who has to grim up and find inner steel when the going gets tough. And the fact of the matter is that Black, Day and Bullock’s performances are roughly similar with much of the emphasis on “oh my God, I don’t know if I can handle this…what am I going to do?”

It was announced yesterday that Amat Escalante‘s horrific Heli is Mexico’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. You’ll have to search far and wide to find a colder, more repellent film than this, and I therefore admire the bravery…okay, the resolve of the Mexican officials who made this call. “This is an animalistic landscape, a territory lorded over by serpents and psychopaths,” I wrote after seeing Heli in Cannes. “It’s hugely unpleasant to watch, but I’ll give Escalante this — he shows violence as a brutally blunt and horrific tool. Which is exactly how it feels in real life.”