I was wrong about the 1.66 aspect ratio of Rosemary’s Baby in yesterday’s rant about same. I spoke this morning with Ron Smith, Paramount’s former prez of preservation and restoration, and he said he agrees with this morning’s comment by High-Def Digest‘s “Josh Z” that the actual RB aspect ratio on the last DVD is 1.78 to 1. A miniscule difference compared to 1.85 to 1, but a difference nonetheless. But I definitely erred in claiming that Rosemary’s Baby was issued on DVD at some point with a 1.66 to 1 aspect ratio. **

And I was therefore wrong to say the Criterion has “cleavered” Rosemary’s Baby by deciding to release their forthcoming Bluray at 1.85. What I should have said is that they’ve Exacto-knived it — i.e., sliced it ever so slightly at the top and bottom of the frame so that watchers of their Bluray will notice a slight sliver of black on the top and bottom, or the same thing they’re now seeing when they pop in the Criterion Bluray of Anatomy of a Murder. And I still say they’re wrong for doing this. Because I believe in height and head space and air that characters in a film can breathe in and out.

So eff Criterion anyway, if you catch my drift. Why didn’t they just leave RB alone and at least go with Smith and Josh Z‘s 1.78 aspect ratio? Why did they have to slice it off ever so slightly? To what end? I’ll tell you to what end. To comply with the Bob Furmanek theology that the only way to figure this stuff out is to read trade reviews written at the opening of a given film’s release, and adhere to the reported aspect ratio — period, final, over and out.

But there’s another way of dealing wth this stuff, and that’s to run an open-matte print of the movie in a screening room and figure out what looks best based on what you want to see and what feels right.

If Mia Farrow and John Cassevettes are eating a steak dinner with Ruth Gordon and Sydney Blackmer in the latter’s apartment, you want to be able to see the steak, and if you can’t see the steak then you need to write a letter to Bob Furmanek and tell him to go eff himself and change the aspect ratio to whatever you need it to be in order to see the meat on the plate. Because Rosemary’s Baby dp William Fraker was, I believe, the kind of guy who liked to show the audience what the characters are eating, and I’m the kind of guy who likes to see that also.

If the Criterion Bluray shows the steak, fine — let’s put this issue to bed. But if it doesn’t show the steak, let’s at least acknowledge that it doesn’t do this and that the steak is lost and gone and that Criterion and Polanski and Furmanek have had a hand in this, and that I, at least, was one person who stood up and said, “Keep the steak! Let’s see the reddish-brown juice on the plate!”

I also still maintain that somewhere back in the leaf-swirl of my memory and down into the swamps of time with a face mask, flippers and snorkel, I saw Rosemary’s Baby at an aspect ratio that was higher and better than 1.85 or 1.78 — perhaps I saw it at a Parisian revival cinema where they still use 1.66 aperture plates? — and for whatever reason I retained that memory.

And when you blend this with so many people having maintained twelve years ago that the Rosemary’s Baby DVD was issued at 1.66 and the knowledge that the film was shot so that a European projectionist could have shown it at 1.66…throw all this together and I know I’m still more or less correct about the 1.66 thing.

I tried like hell to find anyone with a print of Rosemary’s Baby so I could snip out a frame and blow it up and post it on the site, just for the record. Three or four hours ago I called and spoke with Denise Fraker, widow of William Fraker (who passed in 2010), and she was very nice but could only offer a phone number for Bobby Byrne, who was Fraker’s camera operator on Rosemary’s Baby.

I’m going to re-post comment #74 from “Heinz, the Baron Krauss von Espy“…

Wells grabs the little man by the shoulders and draws him close.

WELLS: I’m gonna ask you one more time, kitty cat, what’s the aspect ratio?

POLANSKI (flatly): 1.85.

Wells strikes the director across the face…hard. He’s got his attention now.

WELLS: Stop lying to me, pally. What’s the aspect ratio?

POLANSKI: 1.66.

Crack! Wells slaps the man across the other cheek. Polanski stumbles backward, eyes wide with terror. The man is capable of anything.

POLANSKI: 1.85.

Another blow to the face. The words start to tumble out of Polanski’s mouth in an effort to placate the deranged blogger.

POLANSKI: 1.66! (smack) 1.85!! (smack) One…(smack, smack, smack)

Wells shakes Polanski furiously, consumed with rage. Polanski’s babbles uncontrollably, but manages to blurt out the truth.

POLANSKI: It was composed for 1.85 and protected for 1.66!!

A stunned Wells releases the director, sickened by his very touch. Polanski crumples to the ground in a heap and sobs uncontrollably.

** Having been shot in an open matte in-camera 1.37 aspect ratio, Rosemary’s Baby was presented in a 4 x 3 a.r. for TV airings in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, of course, as well as on VHS tape.

The commercial and cultural blitzkreig that precedes the opening of a major pop-fantasy film is always intimidating on a certain level, so hats off to those critics who’ve said “no” or “not quite” or “meh” to The Dark Knight Rises. The responses have been otherwise positive if not ecstatic across the board so far (86% on Rotten Tomatoes. 81% on Metacritic) but it’s healthy, I think, to show the corporates they can’t just rumble into town on tanks and just roll over everyone and everything. It’s a Republican fantasy, this film — keep that in mind.

In any event a Hollywood Elsewhere salute is hereby offered to Marshall Fine, AP critic Christy Lemire (“an epic letdown”), Badass Digest‘s Devin Faraci, Daily Mail critic Chris Tookey, Movies.com’s James Rocchi, Urban Cinefile’s Andrew Urban and Louise Keller, Time Out‘s David Fear and to a certain extent TheWrap‘s Alonso Duralde.

I learned many years ago that if you speak critically or disparagingly of any major fanboy movie, you will receive a fair amount of hate mail. This happened to me when I trashed The Phantom Menace 13 years ago. I realized then and there that fanboy haters are not only intemperate but on the subliterate side, and so I immediately dismissed any notion of replying or debating. So let’s just ignore the idiots who reportedly threatened (so to speak) Fine and Lemire for their negative reviews.

I love this portion of Devin Faraci’s review:

“Is The Dark Knight Rises any good? The movie entertains. It has a James Bond sensibility where hugely improbable things occur but you shrug them off. The movie is also clunky and structured strangely and — with the exception of Michael Caine‘s Alfred — emotionally empty. The stakes have weirdly never felt lower than they do in The Dark Knight Rises. Nolan keeps the movie going from scene to scene, but the momentum is all cinematic, not narrative.

“As the movie wrapped up with five final minutes that play out exactly like Superhero Hype forum fanfic, I wasn’t hating it. I hadn’t been squirming in my seat. I thought a lot of it was dumb, I laughed at things that probably weren’t meant to be laughed at, and I experienced a few moments of deflation when I realized the movie had nothing to actually say. But I had also been caught up in it, even when it didn’t quite work or make much sense. I liked that Nolan went a little broader, even if that broadness occasionally clashed with his efforts to be ‘realistic.’

“I just don’t care either way. After being profoundly disappointed by the way Batman Begins turned out, and after really enjoying most of The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises evokes no strong feelings in me. It’s large and busy and convinced of its own profundity, but in the end it’s a big shrug.”

This Bain/Bane pic, posted a few hours ago on buzzfeed.com and tweeted by Michael Hayes, arrives at a perfect moment, which is to say a perfectly negative (dare I say calamitous?) one for Mitt Romney. The clamor about his Bain Capital history plus his refusal to release tax returns is burning up the cable news channels only days before Tom Hardy‘s performance as the evil, one-note-ish Bane is about to sink into the consciousness of tens of millions coast to coast.

On one level the Bain/Bane meme is idiotic and dismissable (it would be another thing, of course, if Hardy’s character was spelled Bain) but on another broader, vaguer, sloppier level The Dark Knight Rises will rub it in all the same. Bain/Bane = predatory bad news sociopaths. This is Romney’s worst week so far — right here, right now. Chris Nolan didn’t mean to assault or undermine his presidential campaign, but he has. Or will within days.

7.17 Update: My assertion in this piece, which posted on Monday, 7.16, that a previous DVD of Rosemary’s Baby was issued at an aspect ratio of 1.66 to 1 is incorrect. The rest of this article is fine. I’ve addressed the wrongo in a piece that ran Tuesday, 7.17, called “Limited Mea Culpa.”

Original 7.16 article: Today the Criterion Collection announced that, as rumored, they’ll be releasing a new Bluray/DVD of Rosemary’s Baby (’68), based on a high-definition digital restoration approved by director Roman Polanski. And the aspect ratio — hold on to your hats — will be 1.85…Jesus! I feel like I’m Rosemary Woodhouse on my bed with a scaly Satan lying on top of me, and I’m going “this isn’t a dream…this is really happening!”

The Rosemary’s Baby Bluray won’t be masked at 1.66, which has been the reigning aspect ratio for decades, certainly on the last DVD and on the laser disc before that. And not 1.78, which would perfectly fit the 16 x 9 screen. No — Criterion had to go full-fascist and adhere to the 1.85 aspect ratio that all films have been “officially” screened at commercially in the U.S. since April 1953.

If Rosemary’s Baby had been released in Great Britain, we would today be looking forward to a 1.66 version from Criterion next October. John Schlesinger‘s Sunday Bloody Sunday (’71) was also announced today as a Criterion Bluray release, and it will be masked at 1.66.

I’m horrified that Polanski, who shot 1965’s Repulsion at 1.66 (and was presented at that a.r on Criterion’s Bluray) and clearly shot Rosemary’s Baby with a 1.66 a.r. in mind — the DVD shows that each and every frame is exquisitely composed at that particular shape — has apparently approved the meat-cleavering of his own film! Criterion’s statement that he “approved” this new Bluray obviously indicates that Polanski has told Criterion “sure, go ahead, whack off the tops and bottoms…fine with me!”

I’m purple-faced with rage. I’ve got stomach acid. I’m spitting saliva on the rug. Why am I, sitting at a desk in West Hollywood, trying to protect and defend Rosemary’s Baby as it ought to be seen while its director sits in Paris, shrugging his shoulders and saying “whatever”?

On 3.21.12 I wrote that Polanski “is a European traditionalist at heart, and while he knew that the film would be projected at 1.85 by U.S. exhibitors, per the standard, I strongly suspect that he composed it for 1.66. Look at the 1.66 version of the film that William A. Fraker shot. There are no acres of space above anyone’e head. It’s perfect at 1.66. It’s just right.

It’s not just me claiming that 1.66 is the preferred aspect ratio, and that precedents have been established. 12 years ago DVD Talk‘s Geoffrey Kleinman noted that a 2000 DVD version presented the film at 1.66 to 1. Some wingnut at Turner Classic Movies declared a few years back that Rosemary’s Baby‘s aspect ratio is 1.66. And a commenter at Velocity Reviews asked a while back why Polanski’s film was completely occupying a 16 x 9 screen when a 1.66 a.r. would dictate windowbox bars on the side.

I know how this one is going to go. The fascists are going to carpet-bomb me with their usual goose-stepping crap and I’m going to respond with my usual counter-accusations, etc. It’s an old hymn. I’m no fan of Roman Polanski today, let me tell you. How could he do this to his own film?

The clip below is seemingly cropped at 1.85. It’s not catastrophic, but it’s obviously a bit too cramped. It doesn’t breathe. The framing feels confining.

This popped through in late April. I only paid attention for the first time today. A friend tells me it’s really popular with her daughter and her friends. If it’s popular in a bigger way (and I’ve seen no proof that it is) then Shia LaBeouf might be in some kind of trouble. This video may be a hint of an indication of popular currents in the way that a defaced subway poster tends to mean a little something.

It appears that Douglas Aarniokoski‘s The Day (Anchor Bay, 8.29), a post-apocalyptic actioner with a fresh young cast, has been shot in either extremely desaturated color or plain black-and-white. That in itself makes we want to see it. The color in John Hillcoat‘s The Road, which was the same bowl of gruel, was gray-ash…but this seems totally monochrome. If it’s not, and if it has at least some color, why indicate otherwise in the trailer?

Some IMDB guy called “JeffersMornngToYou” who caught The Day at a “Midnight Madness” screening at September’s Toronto Film Festival called it “spectacular…not just violence but an in-depth look at the depravity that would come from an apocalypse…really character driven, this movie definitely makes you think.”

For whatever reason Josh Radnor‘s Liberal Arts (IFC Films, 9.14), one of the surprises of the Sundance Film Festival (for me at least), has no website up. Isn’t that odd for a film that’s coming out two months hence? And it’s a very decent dramedy — mature, intelligent, well-written, non-cloying, well-acted.

The indication, obviously, is that IFC Films isn’t feeling that enthusiastic, but the film, directed and written by Radnor, played really well at the Eccles screening I attended last January. People were levitating.

Update: IFC Films bigwig Ryan Werner says “everything is coming momentarily on Liberal Arts. We’ve been working with Josh this summer on the materials, etc. And we just did a NYC screening and party at BAM Cinemafest and the film played huge. We remain super enthusiastic.”

Liberal Arts “is a step up in somewhat (but not quite) the same way Annie Hall was a step up for Woody Allen…almost” I wrote on 1.23.12. “Mature, at times melancholy, dialogue and character-driven, not overtly ‘comedic’ (and thank God for that). I really didn’t care for Radnor’s happythankyoumoreplease, so I went expecting not too much and was pleasantly surprised.”

Radnor plays a bright, neurotic, 30-something Manhattanite who’s in a kind of dead-end place, career- and relationship-wise. He’s invited back to his university (somewhere in lower Vermont or New Hampshire, as I recall**) and slips into a really nice platonic thing with a 19-year-old sophomore (Elizabeth Olsen). It naturally occurs to both to take things to the next level, and at this juncture Radnor starts getting all glum and guilt-trippy himself about the wrongness of doing a little 19 year-old lamb. But hold on. When Radnor’s character turns 41 or 42 Olsen’s character will be 29 or 30 or thereabouts — what’s the problem with that? Life is short. It can’t last? Maybe not, but what in life is guaranteed to be a long-term thing?

42 year-old Woody Allen had no problem doing 17 year-old Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan, and in some ways she was more emotionally mature than he. I myself had a really rich and moving thing with a 19 year-old when I was 28, and I never had a moment’s concern and neither did she. Well, I did have a concern when she wound up dumping me after 18 months or so. I was devastated but that’s life. All’s fair, rough and tumble, no assurances.

Liberal Arts costars Richard Jenkins, Allison Janney, John Magaro and Elizabeth Reaser.

** Liberal Arts was actually shot in Columbus and Gambier, Ohio — no Manhattan, no New England.

This is poorly shot but I’m curious about a cat issue. You’ll notice around the eight-second mark that Aura is responding to her lower back being scratched by sticking her tongue in and out. I’ve owned six or seven cats in my life (two run over by cars, one dead from pancreatic cancer) and I’ve never seen this before. They usually arch their back, raise their head, close their eyes and purr.

This arrived in a cardboard box two weeks ago from TNT publicity. A promotion for the TNT series Perception, it’s been sitting on a table near a window. I’ll never put this into any of my USB drives, I can tell you.

Some of the bitch-slappy critics have gotten it wrong about Aaron Sorkin‘s The Newsroom. I’ve watched all four episodes (last night’s being a comedy of tabloid embarassment called “I’ll Try to Fix You”) and I’m convinced that the messy personal relationship aspects are not the most problematic or irksome stuff but possibly the best so far.

Jeff Daniels‘ Will McAvoy isn’t just a mouthpiece for Sorkin’s views about journalism and politics — he’s almost certainly a projection of Sorkin’s snappy, mouthy personality and (probably) his own messy, lurching tendencies in the personal realm, past or present. I know guys like Will McAvoy — guys who know what they know and should stay away from alcohol. I’ve never been into bimbos, but a friend told me last night that in my drinking days she could imagine me over-emphasizing a point in a party chat with a lady and getting a drink thrown in my face (which is what happened last night to McAvoy when he insulted Hope Davis‘s Page Six-y gossip reporter).

For all their anger and awkwardness, these scenes are real and riveting and sometimes funny. Perhaps not all that substantial or even necessary at the end of the day, okay, but “fun” and entertaining.

I’m also persuaded that The Newsroom‘s high-minded, speechy argument scenes about journalistically manning up and speaking truth to Tea Party idiocy and Republican loons (and with dialogue, yes, that is unrealistically eloquent and incisive) have never been fair-minded attempts to portray real-world, real-deal journalism as it’s actually experienced and struggled with out there. The characters, we all realize, are at best incidentally related to actual, sometimes fretting, constantly pressured journalists as they exist at CNN or MSNBC or wherever. And I’m fine with that.

The Newsroom is about what Sorkin thinks and feels about everything in the political news reporting realm that offends and agitates him — simple. He’s got this show and this HBO forum and this power to say all this stuff (most of which I agree with 100%) to tens of millions, and he’s letting go like a man possessed. What’s not to like? The Newsroom is a truthful playtime series for angry lefties and people who are sick of absurd, delusional rightwing views and contentions being reported about in a fair, mild-mannered, business-as-usual way by the MSM reporters, anchors and commentators. You can’t say Sorkin isn’t making a necessary point here.

There was a sequence last night about how rightwing shriekers (Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, Bachmann, NRA exec vp Wayne LaPierre) went on a tear in 2010 about Barack Obama being anti-gun — a virtually baseless, bullshit, non-factual contention. But they did it anyway because it excites the base and attracts political contributions. These people aren’t wrong — they need to be put on trial and if possible penalized as strictly as possible.

And you can’t tell me, by the way, that the mano e mano face-off between station owner Jane Fonda and Newsroom editor-boss Sam Waterston wasn’t damn good and reflective of what many, many owners have said (or certainly meant to say) to many, many journalism vets over the decades.

Hope Davis‘s Page Six reporter: “Are we going to go back to flirting, or are you going to keep putting me down?”

Jeff Daniels: “I’m not putting you down. I’m just saying that what you do is a really bad form of pollution that makes us dumber and meaner and is destroying civilization. I’m saying with all possible respect that I would have more respect for you if you were a heroin dealer. I’m speaking professionally, not personally.”

Davis: “Ok, well, I’m speaking personally when I say fuck you — and you just passed up a sure thing.”

It’s my non-alcoholic view that rudeness should be avoided, but it also means something to politely call a genuine monster a monster to his/her face. In a genial roundabout way, I mean. If you decide to do that, it’s usually because of brass and intemperance or that last drink. If you get a drink thrown into your face as a response, you just have to take it. Say “okay, I get it,” get out a handkerchief, withdraw and move on.