Jeffrey Wells Chris Nolan has not only shot The Odyssey entirely in full-screen (1.43:1) IMAX, but the apparent intention is to project the entire film in this boxy, super-tall aspect ratio.
Does anyone believe this? I don’t. Because it’s never happened before. Because IMAX films always wind up being projected in 1.85. Even in theatres capable of presenting a full IMAX image, it’s always a cheat. Because it’s a marketing scam. Because it’s all a lie, or has been so far.
…why I was wasting my time on TikTok reactions to those Sydney Sweeney American Eagle “good genes” ads…these Clueless Clems have surely realized by now that by the early afternoon (Monday, 7.28) the entire MSM had jumped on this story also.
I was told yesterday that a University of Chicago student is looking to write an essay about prison movies. I was asked if I’d be willing to share some thoughts about this genre. Here’s what I sent along:
First and foremost, I don’t want to know from prison movies as a rule. Prison movies are almost always — inevitably — about systemic suffocation or more precisely and ominously a kind of state-imposed death…repression, resignation and the turning off of spiritual lights.
I realize that the best ones address the age-old question “why does a caged bird sing?”
And speaking of birds…yes, I know that John Frankenheimer’s Birdman of Alcatraz (‘62) is about a kind of liberation within this hellish suffocation, but it’s still set in a place of grim, gloomy, concrete regimentation.
Prison movies are generally bad for the human soul. So much of real life and standard-issue drama is about spiritual or economic confinement. I am currently living in a prison of my own making, and every day I’m trying to bust out.
You know what a good “prison” movie is/was? Arthur Miller’s Death of A Salesman — both the Lee J. Cobb and Dustin Hoffman versions. Or Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker. Or Prince of the City..
I admired Jacques Audiard’s The Prophet (‘10) but I’ll never re-watch it because it simply lacks sufficient oxygen.
And yet I was deeply moved by Lazio Nemes’ Son of Saul (‘15), arguably the grimmest, most hopeless WWII concentration camp film ever made.
I respect Buzz Kulik’s Kill Me If You Can (‘77), but mainly for Alan Alda’s ace-level performance as Caryl Chessman. Ditto Lawrence Schiller’s The Executioner’s Song (‘82) with Tommy Lee Jones. And yet both are primarily legal strategy films.
The best “boy, it sure is fucking miserable living in a U.S. prison” flick is Robert M. Young’s Short Eyes (‘77), which is based on a stage play by Miguel Pinero. (It’s the only prison film I’ve seen more than once, and possibly even thrice.)
The only ones I want to even think about watching or re-watching are prison escape movies: Escape From Alcatraz, Call Northside 777, The Great Escape, The Hot Rock, Ben Stiller’s Escape From Donnemara.
If I never watch The Shawshank Redemption again, it’ll be too soon.
I loathe The Green Mile with every last fiber of my being.
Greg Kwedar’s Sing Sing is a “lemme the fuck outta here!” film. I felt bored and drained by the set-up and especially by Colman Domingo’s soulful lead performance. The more emotion the prisoners summoned from within, the more bummed-out I felt. While sitting through it I was thinking “where is James Cagney and his Cody Jarrett break-out routine when you really need it?”
Oh, and I really hate Franklin Schaffner and Steve McQueen’s Papillon (‘73). Ditto Life Is Beautiful.
If you’re flying to Europe on the reasonably-priced Scandinavian Airlines (SAS), you’ll have to accept a stopover in Stockholm, Oslo or Copenhagen. So on my way to the Venice Film Festival (the outgoing JFK red-eye leaves late Saturday afternoon, 8.23) I’ll be staying in Copenhagen for 25, 26 hours…something in that vicinity.
But the next day I won’t be flying straight to Venice’s Marco Polo airport. Just for the eye-filling splendor of it all, I’m flying instead from Copenhagen–Kastrup to Luca Guadagnino’s Milan (haven’t stood before the Duomo since ‘92) and then taking a late-Monday-morning train to Katharine Hepburn and Rosanno Brazzi’s Venezia San Lucia. Just for the visual-sensual-spiritual-atmospheric aspects.
I’ve visited Venice as an X-factor traveller-tourist six or seven times, and have never stayed for more than two or three days. Next month’s visit will last 12 days.
I’ll be hitting Milan for nearly a full day on my way back
Except it’s just The Adventures of Cliff Booth. Forget the “Continuing.”
One problem: When F1 opened a few weeks ago, Brad Pitt’s hair was tennis-ball length. Which is way too short for 1977. Nobody who swaggered around in the disco era had tennis-ball hair….nobody. Not even gay guys.
Released within industry circles in mid-July of 1995, Windows 95 was open for Average Joe purchase on 8.24.95. It sold for $209.95, or roughly $440 in 2025 dollars. Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator (which initially surfaced in ‘94)…I can already feel a headache coming on from the memories alone.
An operating system from hell, Windows 95 was a steep, craggy mountain that I struggled daily to climb. Ropes, pick-axes…a real motherfucker.
I recall hanging out at a computer retail place on Pico Blvd. back then and asking advice from guys who worked there about some of the gnarlier tech issues. Quote: “Windows 95, man! Better men than I have been beaten down by it. Do not take that operating system lightly!”
I’ve been a Mac guy since ‘09 or thereabouts…what a comparative breeze. Because I grappled and fumbled and sweated within the Microsoft realm for the better part of 15 years or more. I don’t want to think back on those times, but it was rough going. The viruses alone.
Late last week a local man with “issues” — some temperamentally distracted, possibly mentally unbalanced fellow — attracted the attention of the citizenry in HE’s very own Wilton, Connecticut.
And then the cops got wind and eventually this poor soul was led away and driven to a nearby hospital.
Alas, the readers of Good Morning Wilton, which is written and edited by the socially obedient Heather Borden Herve, were told a somewhat different story.
The disturbed guy with issues was given an upgraded description, for one thing — he became “an individual in crisis.” And the episode was sanitized to a fare-thee-well. Herve decided to forego any physical descriptions — not even the approximate age of the poor guy.
What Herve wrote and posted was bad reporting, plain and simple. Regimented police-blotter stuff. And an insult to the art and the challenge of good writing.
That would’ve never worked. Too ivory tower, too playwright-ish…a name that pines for dignity. The combination of “Billy” and that Polish-German accent was perfect. Billy sounds playful, mischievous, maybe a bit wicked.
…about poor Ozzy Osbourne. Never plugged into the utter, low-rent shallowness of Black Sabbath. Biting off the head of a bat…get outta my life. Never watched The Osbournes during the Dubya years. I tried to find that whimsical “Ozzy contemplates life as an older guy” song, but it wouldn’t come up.
Friendo: “First democracy and now Ozzy. I can’t take any more.”
It’s apparently not playing Venice and perhaps not even Telluride, but James Vanderbilt’s Nuremberg (Sony Classics, 11.7) will have a gala premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, and it’s a hot ticket, I’m told.
Me to Friendo: “If Nuremberg is so good why isn’t it premiering in Venice or Telluride? Why launch it at TIFF, which is but a shadow of its former self?
Vanderbilt did an excellent job with Truth (‘15), which he wrote, directed and produced.
If the buzz is correct, Nuremberg could be a great comeback vehicle for Russell Crowe, who plays overweight Nazi luftwaffer commander Hermann Goring. A good get for costar Rami Malek also.
