Jeffrey Wells

So as of Tuesday, 9.20, In Contention‘s Kris Tapley will be folded into Hitfix and banging out his stuff (along with Guy Lodge). So where are the “Tapley Is Coming!” come-ons, or the easy-to-spot In Contention bullet logo? Right now the Hitfix main page (which emphasizes an undigestive orange-and-blue color scheme) has the usual links to the usual cheezwhiz stories and promotions…and zip about Tapley. Can you imagine adding a big-name columnist to your site and actually keeping this news hidden from casual visitors?

Presumably the In Contention link will appear alongside Drew McWeeny‘s Motion Captured and Greg Ellwood‘s Awards Campaign within the MOVIES drop-down menu. What kind of entertainment site puts its star columnists — i.e., writers who attract readers with an I.Q. north of 85, especially among industry and media types — inside a closet that you need to access with a drop-down menu?

If I was suddenly hired to run Hitfix, the man/woman who designed this site would be fired and out the door so fast that a wind-and-suction effect would scatter loose paper.

I’ve always hated the Hitfix design. It’s indecisively busy and scattered and inelegant. And that godawful orange! One look and you want to leave. It makes you feel as if you’ve walked into a store in Syracuse that sells used hockey outfits and other sporting uniforms. Tapley’s impending arrival has simply reminded me of this.

DVD Beaver’s Gary Tooze is calling the Ben-Hur Bluray “VERY impressive…I was blown away. Obviously from a 65mm film source [and] reportedly restored frame-by-frame…a 1080p in all its glory and around a 2.75:1 aspect ratio. Even things like the ‘Overture’ title are visually inspiring. Many scenes…appear truly overwhelming. The Blu-ray transfer brings Ben-Hur to another level of home theater appreciation…WOW!”

8K scan of 65mm elements, 2.76 to 1 aspect ratio, etc.

Concern: With the much higher resolution I would imagine that the shots of the miniaturized ships and little-doll-solders on board during the sea-battle sequence will be more evident (i.e., more embarassing) than ever Nitpick: Everyone knows that the perfect-world aspect ratio of this Camera 65 presentation is 2.76 to 1, so why does Tooze call it 2.75?

Here’s an early August piece I ran about the Ben-Hur aspect ratio issue.

“We keep you alive to row this ship….row well and live.”

I’ll finally be seeing this film on a big screen in the full 2.76 to 1 aspect ratio (projected at 4K) via
the New York Film Festival screening on Saturday, 10.1.

Part of the curious power of John Ford‘s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is that it overrides its own stoppers. Average Joes look at this thing and go, “Wait…a black-and-white western partly shot on sound stages costarring a couple of guys in their 50s pretending to be in their 30s?” John Wayne, James Stewart and Lee Marvin are straight and steady, but the other actors deliver in the usual Ford cornball style. Andy Devine‘s fat pushover sheriff is ludicrous.

But it has an underlying sadness and resignation, and the story sticks to your ribs and the themes resonate above and beyond what “happens,” and thus the classic stamp.

In any event N.Y. Times columnist Maureen Dowd has written a column that analogizes Barack Obama with Stewart’s “Rance” Stoddard and Gov. Rick Perry with Wayne’s Tom Doniphon. Her point is more or less that Perry is an intellectual primitive. Abundant evidence exists to support that observation. But while Doniphon saw and responded to the world in relatively simplistic terms, he was arguably a kind of realist…at least in terms of what the rough-and-tumble culture of Shinbone was in the early days. No one would call Perry a realist. He perceives through the prism of secular wackazoid sights. Evolution “is a theory that’s out there,” etc.

If Perry resembles anyone in Ford’s 1962 film, it’s Marvin’s Liberty Valance — a guy who basically says “I do what I do because I’m tough and snarly enough…get outta my way.” And who tried, remember, to nominate himself for higher office in Act Three.

A healthy percentage of the HE community has now seen Drive. How did the “room” feel as you watched it? (I’d especially like to hear from people outside the NY-LA sphere on this one.) Is it too artsy-chilly Scandinavian to connect with Joe Popcorn, or could Joe be in the mood for this kind of thing right now? Were any over-45 couples in attendance?

Earlier this week Drive director Nicholas Winding Refn shed some light (by way of The Playlist‘s Corey Everett) on how his Harrison Ford project The Dying of the Light fell apart. What is Ford’s basic malfunction? He bails on this plus Traffic, Syriana, A History of Violence and A Walk Among the Tombstones and instead makes stuff like Cowboys & Aliens?

In early 2010 Refn partially explained the situation. “Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out,” Refn said. “It’s a shame. The script was fantastic but things fall apart. It’s one of those things that’s difficult, I really like Harrison and I think we got along great.”

The real story of Light‘s collapse was passed along by Refn at a sneak screening of Drive at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Wednesday, 9.14. Everett posted his story today.

Jay Roach‘s Game Change, the forthcoming HBO film based on John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s book about the 2008 election, will apparently deemphasize the Democratic side of the story (Obama, Hillary, John Edwards) and ignore it entirely in terms of actors cast as principal Democrats. The focus will be on the Republicans, particularly John McCain (Ed Harris), Sarah Palin (Julianne Moore) and their handlers.

Photo totally stolen from posting by Awards Daily‘s Ryan Adams

I understand this approach entirely. It makes perfect sense. If I was going to direct or produce a feature based on Theodore H. White‘s The Making of the President 1960, I would probably do the same and focus only on Richard Nixon, Pat Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge.

Every time I see a film shot in India, I vow to myself that I will never, ever visit that country for any reason. The dust, clutter, mobs, poverty, etc. Nor will I ever visit Bangkok due to the footage of that city in The Hangover, Part II. Vietnam, however, is another story. One way or another I’ll get there.

According to Awards Daily‘s Patrick Mullen, Paddy Considine‘s Tyrannosaur “was met with an enthusiastic standing ovation at last night’s [Toronto Film Festival] screening…one of the few I’ve seen at the festival this year and well deserved.” Which is analogous to what I’ve been saying all along.

Bill Maher and Keith Olbmerann‘s “Republican membrane man” routine happened last night. I’m also a huge fan of Maher’s analogy riff (delivered last summer) about Republican voters and the Casey Anthony jury. I laughed out loud (rare for me) at Maher’s riff about how Republicans are so insanely anti-Obama that if he said “I like your smile” they’d shoot themselves in the face.

I had one immediate reaction to last night’s Wrap report by Joshua Weinstein that Warren Beatty and Paramount Pictures have parted company over his Howard Hughes movie, and that Arnon Milchan‘s New Regency will now finance the film. That reaction, which I muttered to myself as I sat in a Brooklyn club listening to Starfucker, was “hey…Peter Bart predicted this!”

Three months ago Bart privately remarked to a journalist friend that Beatty’s Hughes movie probably won’t happen at Paramount. “But it was just announced,” I said. “With [Paramount chief] Brad Grey talking about what a delight the script is.” My friend replied, “I’m just telling you what he said.” Bart was probably alluding to the Beatty issues that have arisen when he’s made films before — costly exactitude, extra expenses, complications, disputes, slower progress than anticipated and all the other things that occur when a filmmaker is ultra-careful and particular.

Two or three weeks later I asked Bart about this when I ran into him at an event. He shrugged and smiled and said he might have been mistaken, and the subject was dropped. But Bart was a Paramount production exec in the ’60s and ’70s (and later worked in a similar capacity at MGM and Lorimar) and dealt with Beatty directly, and to some extent obviously knew whereof he spoke.

“Warren’s script is quintessential Beatty, elegantly written and wonderfully entertaining,” Grey said last June when the Hughes-Paramount deal was announced. “It is our privilege to have one of the great artists in the history of the film industry come home to Paramount.”

Everyone keeps repeating that the Hughes movie” is expected to go into production later this year.” I’ll believe it when it happens.

A N.Y. Times/CBS News poll has President Obama with a 43% approval rating, which “is significantly higher than Jimmy Carter, who had an approval rating of 31 percent at a similar time in his presidency.” Jeff Zeleny and Megan Thee-Brean‘s story adds that “Ronald Reagan had an approval of 46 percent” at this particular time in 1983 “and the elder George Bush was at 70 percent” at this juncture in 1991.