Jeffrey Wells

Laugh Riot

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Sony doesn’t screen movies like The Evil Dead (4.5) for guys like me…is that it? Because…what, I’m not that big on roaring chainsaws plunging into screaming mouths? Do I need to man up and expand my cinematic vistas? All I know is that if Lou Taylor Pucci is in a film there’s a good chance I won’t like it. It’s not fair, it’s cruel, it’s heartless but years of experience have taught me about the Curse of Pucci. I’d like to have my mind changed about this. I really would.

I’ve also learned to regard any positive or semi-positive review written by Variety‘s Joe Leydon at South by Southwest with a grain of salt. Especially when it comes to horror.

I am, however, impressed by the following: “There’s no CGI in the movie. Everything you will see is real, which was really demanding. This was a very long shoot, 70 days of shooting at night. There’s a reason people use CGI it’s cheaper and faster, I hate that. We researched a lot of magic tricks and illusion tricks. [Like] how you would make someone’s arm disappear.” — director Fede Alvarez speaking to io9.

“The bloody mayhem is so graphic and frequent throughout “Evil Dead,” one cannot help suspecting that alternate takes had to be shot to ensure an R rating,” Leydon wrote on March 8th. “The emphasis on dismemberment and disfigurement should make this must-see entertainment for gorehounds, but could literally scare off auds accustomed to less explicit, PG-13 fare.

“Ultimately, the new Evil Dead will rely heavily on existing fans of this unlikely franchise to make a killing in theatrical and homevid release. Those who get the inside jokes should be easy to spot: They’ll be the ones laughing when the onscreen carnage erupts most furiously.”

Mess Around

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This Universal late-summer release (8.2) looks like reasonably efficient escapism. My only concern that the last U.S.-made film by Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur was Contraband, which was my idea of dogshit. Denzel Washington is looking a little slimmer than he did in his last four or five films, which is good. He was looking pretty blimpy in Flight. Note: I posted this hours ago and for whatever reason it vanished.

Wells to Scorsese About Shane

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Dear Marty,

We’ve never technically met but we did a phoner while you were cutting Casino. It was for an Entertaiment Weekly piece I was working on about a restoration of The Wild Bunch. This is the same email I’ve sent you via the Film Foundation email address. I’m double-posting out of concern that it might not get through with your editing of Wolf of Wall Street demanding all your time and attention.

You may not have heard about the great Shane Bluray brouhaha by now so I’ll just summarize. Warner Home Video has licensed the rights from Paramount for a Shane Bluray that was prepared by George Stevens, Jr. and, I’m told, the folks at Technicolor. As you probably know Shane was shot by George Stevens and dp Loyal Griggs between July and mid-October 1951 with a 1.37:1 aspect ratio. And yet I’ve been told by Stevens, Jr. that the WHV Bluray will present his father’s film at a 1.66:1, which Stevens Jr. was apparently asked to compose by Paramount Home Video execs.

Stevens, Jr. has been very exacting, he told me, in making sure that the 1.66:1 compositions do not compromise his father’s classic film, and that given a choice between presenting a 1.37 Shane with big black bars on either side of the image and a 1.66 Shane with slender borders on either side he believes that the latter will be commercially preferable. He also said he’s confident that his father would be pleased with the 1.66 version.

I’m sorry but Stevens Sr. and Griggs shot Shane in 1.37 and that’s the end of it — there can be no other consideration. Stevens Jr. told me that a 1.37 “Academy ratio” version was also prepared for Bluray. If WHV wants to release the Shane Bluray at an alternative 1.66 aspect ratio for commercial purposes, fine, but out of respect for the vision of Stevens Sr. and Griggs they need to make the 1.37 version available via Warner Archives. If you review the comments about this issue on Home Theatre Forum you’ll see that the overwhelming majority agree that both versions of Shane need to be made available.

Respected archivist Bob Furmanek has written on HTF that Shane “was clearly composed for 1.37:1. I prefer to see it in that ratio. I feel that is how it should be seen.” And restoration guru Robert Harris says on HTF that “while I would love to also see the film in 1.37…hopefully, a dual format release can occur, as the data would have been completed both ways.”

I’m assuming that you agree with the 1.37 crowd, and am also hoping that perhaps you could make your opinion known. Anything you could do, say or write would, one assumes, greatly influence WHV’s decision regarding the 1.37 version being made available down the road. Many thanks and best of luck with Wolf of Wall Street.

Jeffrey Wells, HE

p.s.: Here’s a link with two HE articles about the Shane dust-up.

We Will Fatten You

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When guys start getting domestic with a live-in girlfriend or wife or a steady lady food always plays a big part in their life together and is often a major emotional expression of her part. (Unless he’s the big foodie.) Constant access to delicious meals and snacks is one of life’s genuine priveleges and pleasures, and a really nice way of showing and accepting love. But I’ve come to believe that many women have an under-agenda in constantly serving great meals, and that is to put weight on their significant others.

I’m not saying that foodie women are consciously plotting or scheming to fatten up their boyfriends and husbands. They’re first and foremost showing love and being creative and spreading warm vibes and doing a really nice thing. But beyond all that I believe they’re at least secretly or subliminally at peace with their boyfriends of husbands putting on a few pounds because a slightly heavier man is a little less attractive to other women. They know that guys with a bulky or beefy look are in effect communicating to women on the prowl that they’re in some kind of committed relationship and not available, or are a little lazy with the workouts and perhaps are not as rugged and disciplined as they could be.

I know that it’s very hard to maintain a strict diet if you’re going out with a woman who’s a high-end foodie. They don’t quit with offerings of this or that hors d’eouvre or snack or dessert, and you find yourself politely saying “no, thanks but it looks great” over and over and over and over again. They’re relentless and one way or another you wind up eating a bit more and looking like a beefalo if you’re not careful. Women are generally not your friend when you’re trying to slim down and/or stay trim.

Eat It, Joe

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Channing Tatum’s agent to Paramount: “The only way he’s in G.I. Joe: Retaliation is if he gets killed within 20 minutes.” Paramount to Tatum’s agent: “20 minutes? We were thinking more like 35 or 40. A supporting role, not a cameo.” Tatum’s agent: “Dead in 20 or we walk.”Paramount: “We might go for 30. C’mon, dude — we’re paying a lot of money here.” Tatum’s agent: “Would you like me to make it 15?.”

I wasn’t invited to see G.I. Joe: Retaliation (Paramount figured why bother?) but if I had been I would have passed. I won’t pay to see it this weekend and I won’t see it on Netflix or Amazon or Hulu down the road. If three guys dressed in black suits came to my door and said “get dressed — we’re taking you right now to the Grove to see G.I. Joe: Retaliation” I would say “eff you, I’m not going anywhere” and they would say “you’re going — do you want us to bodily carry you into the theatre and strap you down?” To which I would say “will you take money to go away?” If they agreed to leave me alone for $30 I would pay them. I think I would go as high as $50. If they insisted on $100 I’d probably submit and suffer through the damn thing. Assholes.

When Good People Make So-So Films

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Assembling a top-grade team doesn’t mean the film will be any kind of great shakes. Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Wrong Man (1956), a moderately interesting but mostly dull and plodding procedural, is but one example. Hitch directing a script co-written by the great Maxwell Anderson. A stellar cast topped by Henry Fonda, Vera Miles, Anthony Quayle and Harold J. Stone. Shot by the esteemed Robert Burks, edited by George Tomasini and scored by Bernard Herrmann. And audiences went “wait…what?”

Today’s Hollywood Elsewhere assignment is to name other duds or under-performers on which on the very best people worked — the most talented, the highest paid, the most respected. All that potential and swagger and….phfffft.

Griffiths Ascends

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The great Richard Griffiths, known to the popcorn-eating masses as mean Uncle Vernon in the Harry Potter films but whom I loved for his legendary History Boys performance as Hector the lecherous professor (which I saw in New York in ’06), has died at age 65.

He died of complications following heart surgery, but let’s face it — he died from the backwash of being too fat. But what an aroma of engagement and crackling intelligence he had (or seemed to have). What a wonderfully alert and alive and richly educated mind, or at least what a splendid ability he had to convey this in various performances.

“During a performance of The History Boys, Griffiths became so annoyed at a man in the audience whose mobile phone rang repeatedly through the play that Griffiths stopped acting after the sixth time and ordered the man out of the theatre. At a later date, Griffiths asked a member of the audience to leave a performance of Heroes after her phone rang three times. This interruption of a performance because of audience distraction happened no fewer than three times in his career.”

Harry In A Hole

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The basic thrust of this 3.28 Hollywood Reporter story by Hal Espen and Borys Kit is that Ain’t It Cool News is no longer the big-cheese website it was in the late ’90s and early aughts, at least as far as ad revenue is concerned. The shocker is that last July AICN honcho Harry Knowles found himself in big trouble with the IRS, owing $300 grand in back taxes. Harry gradually managed to get himself out of dutch (glad to hear it), but he’s still scrambling as we speak.

All to say that the bearded, overweight, medically afflicted editor/columnist is no King of the Mountain in today’s realm. But I guess we’ve all known that for years. The curious thing, I’m told by a source, is that the business manager who got Knowles into tax trouble, Roland De Noie, is still in Harry’s employ.

“It was July 2012, and Harry Knowles was working up a sweat,” the story begins. “Eighteen months earlier, the creator-owner-figurehead of Ain’t It Cool News collapsed and had back surgery to treat the effects of spinal stenosis, a chronic condition stemming in part from a 1996 fall that left him intermittently reliant on a wheelchair. So now he was walking on a treadmill at a clinic near his Austin home as part of his physical therapy.

“His phone rang. Still trudging, Knowles answered. It was Roland De Noie, his business manager.

“‘I really f—ed up,’ said De Noie in a panic. ‘It’s all my fault.’ He had discovered that Ain’t It Cool News — the website Knowles started in his Texas bedroom that grew to be the scourge of Hollywood, redefined the nature and pace of entertainment journalism and turned an overweight, ginger-haired self-diagnosed movie nerd into the face of a geek nation on the rise — owed about $300,000 in unpaid taxes.

“While Ain’t It Cool News had been making $700,000 a year in gross advertising revenue at its height in the early- to mid-2000s, that had dipped to the low-six figures by 2012. The business had no cash reserves and no way to pay the bills. Its bank account had been seized. ‘We’re not going to be able to get out of this one,’ said De Noie.”