The only officially announced Venice Film Festival selections that seem even vaguely pulse-quickening are Juian Schnabel‘s Miral, Vincent Gallo‘s Promises Written in Water (nice title), Tom Tykwer‘s Three, Ben Affleck‘s The Town (out of competition), Casey Affleck‘s I’m Still Here: The Lost Year of Joaquin Phoenix (ditto), Martin Scorsese and Kent Jones‘ A Letter to Elia (ditto), and John Turturro‘s Passione (ditto).

This recently released trailer for Titanic 2: Electric Boogaloo is not a mash-up. It’s selling an actual, honest-to-God, straight-to-DVD movie about a second Titanic hitting a second iceberg. The stars are Bruce Davison and Brooke Burns. Okay, I’m kidding about the Boogaloo but everything else is genuine. Really.

Asylum will be releasing Titanic 2….wait, is it Titanic 2, Titanic II, or Titanic 2: The Asylum Version? Or Clash of the Titanics? Anyway, it’s out on 8.24.

HE takes its hat off to Titanic 2‘s director, screenwriter and costar Shane Van Dyke. He’s 30 years old, 6’3″ and the grandson of Dick Van Dyke and grand-nephew of Jerry Van Dyke. Making such a film and getting it distributed took balls of steel.

I was talking a while back about Kenneth Branagh throwing up each and every day in his hotel room during the making of Thor. Can you imagine what poor Bruce Davison must have been feeling during production?

The production reportedly used the Queen Mary in Long Beach so “play” the Titanic II or…you know, the actual ship.

According to DVD Beaver’s Gary Tooze, Criterion’s forthcoming Bluray of Terry Zwigoff‘s Crumb “has bright colors, heavy grain and looks far more film-like than either of the previous Sony DVDs (1999 and 2006 Special Edition). However, I don’t know that it is a film that benefits extensively from the move to Bluray 1080p.”

Wells translation: Who’s running the show over there? They take a funky little film like Crumb and Bluray it? Why?

Back to Tooze: “Although saying that, it is true that much of the comic art and facial close-ups can look surprisingly impressive in the higher resolution.

Wells translation: Well, I have to say something nice about the Bluray upgrade…right? Gotta keep my relationships at par.

Back to Tooze: “Crumb is not a viewing experience that one will recall for its striking appearance but the Criterion HD does support the ‘rustic’ feel of the film’s content. It is dual-layered with a very high video bitrate and colors seem brighter and truer than SD could relate. Skin tones seem warm and contrast exhibits healthy black levels. One must surely feel that this Blu-ray exports the most honest original representation of this amusing, thought-provoking and, sometimes, painful portrait.”

Wells comment: In other words, the decision to put out Crumb in Bluray was at best quizzical and at worst pointless. What does it cost to master a film for Bluray? $100 grand? Less? I would have much preferred a Bluray of Downhill Racer over Crumb.

If nothing else I’m guessing that the Crumb Bluray is a way for the Criterion grain monks to flex their muscles, strut their stuff and remind the world what they’re still in the game and not backing off an inch. The Grainmakers!

On the left, a 31 or 32 year-old Jeff Bridges in a scene from Tron (’82). On the right, a CG plastic-surgery version of “young” Bridges in the forthcoming Tron Legacy. The latter was achieved by youthing down the present-day Bridges, 60, with digital scrubs and touchups. Except the result doesn’t really look like Bridges. It looks like a cross between a celebrity lookalike and a Bridges dummy you might find inside Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. It’s a lazy effort.

Jeff Bridges in Tron; 60 year-old Bridges de-aged through CG scrub-down in Tron Legacy.

Imagine how cool it would have been if Bridges had been convincingly youthified — if the 31 or 32-year-old version had literally been brought back to life. For “real.” I don’t know enough about CG techniques to speak with authority but I know a thing or two about what’s possible. And if you ask me director Joseph Kosinski should have told his team to digitally copy and re-work frame images from various Bridges’ films in the late ’70s and early ’80s and then integrate them into Tron Legacy. That way we’d be looking at Bridges as he actually appeared nearly 30 years ago.

I was told a few months ago that Kosinski is “the new James Cameron.” And I’m starting to doubt that. Cameron would have never settled for this.

The Pursuitist has posted the trailer for Kenneth Branagh‘s Thor that was shown a few days ago at Comic-Con. Branagh + Thor = whore. You can’t tell me that an esteemed middle-aged British actor-director who knows from William Shakespeare did this film for any other reason than a large stinking paycheck, or that he didn’t retire to his hotel room every night during shooting and throw up.

Look at Chris Hemsworth — the brawn, the blonde hair, the Nolte-Schwarzenegger facial structure, the non-Barrymore-esque profile. He’s friendly and amiable and smiling in interviews (naturally), but he’s another Australian workout ape from Gold’s Gym. And poor Natalie Portman, pretending to be flirtatious and turned on by the whole comic-book superhero perversion. (“It might be tedious but I’ve been well paid!”) And Anthony Hopkins, the absolute whore of whores playing another bearded father of another powerful but tortured legend in the wake of Beowulf and The Wolfman.

And finally, look at the trailer. Listen to the soundtrack when Thor/Hemsworth arches his back and hows at the unfairness of things by going “Aaahrrrrgh!” Hell is not other people — hell is movies like this with the same old ingredients, time and time again. This is why I fantasized about strafing the Comic-Con faithful, because they support films like this and clamor for more.

Paramount will release Thor in 3D on 5.11.11.

Yeesterday Cinematical‘s Eric Snider posted a hilarious review of the trailer for Ben Affleck‘s The Town, which will debut on this continent at the Toronto Film Festival. Snider should do a separate trailer-reviewing column. Here’s a portion:

“‘From the acclaimed director of Gone Baby Gone…’ The acclaimed director of Gone Baby Gone happens to be a fellow named Ben Affleck, who also happens to be the star of The Town. You think, ‘Why wouldn’t they just say, ‘From acclaimed director Ben Affleck’?’ Then you realize you’ve answered your own question.

“‘… and the studio that brought you The Departed.’ Obviously, we’re supposed to notice that The Town, like The Departed, is set among criminal types in Boston; therefore The Town must be as good as The Departed. The fact that they came from the same studio confirms it! But think about it. The studio. Not the director, the writer, or even the producer. Just the studio. Saying that The Town is from the studio that brought you The Departed is like saying ice cream is from the species that brought you corduroy.”

Apocalypse Now cinematographer Vittorio Storaro is (in)famous for having long insisted upon cropping Apocalypse Now, originally filmed in 35mm widescreen Panavision at an aspect ratio of 2.35 to 1, to a somewhat less wide shape — either a 2.00 to 1 aspect ratio (which are the dimensions of Storaro’s Univisium system, which he would like to see adopted as a universal standard) or a 70mm aspect ratio of 2.21 to 1.

But now the gates have been stormed and Vittorio’s rule has been overturned. Lionsgate announced today that the forthcoming Apocalypse Now Bluray, set for release on 10.19, will be presented in 2.35 to 1. Yes!

Francis Coppola‘s legendary 1979 film was shown in the 70mm widescreen aspect ratio (2.21 to 1) during its initial engagements in big-city theatres, and then in the wider 35mm aspect ratio when it went into general release. But on Apocalypse Now DVDs (including the Redux version), Storaro standards have prevailed with the image cropped to either 2.21 to 1 or 2.00 to 1. I was never entirely sure which one it was, but I know two things: (a) it was boxier (i.e., a certain percentage of the sides sliced off), and (b) a lot of people in the elite home video community have been pissed at Storaro for years about this. So Lionsgate’s decision has almost made Storaro into a kind of metaphor for Nicolae Ceaucescu escaping Budapest in a helicopter in late December 1989.

As HE’s Moises Chiullan put it earlier today, “Our long 2.20:1 nightmare, begun by the otherwise-brilliant Vittorio Storaro, is at last over — on this picture, at least.”

There will be two Bluray versions of Apocalypse Now available from Lionsgate: (1) a 2-disc two-film set, which contains the 1979 and Redux versions, old extras and some new ones, and (2) a 3-disc full disclosure edition, which duplicates everything in the two-film set and adds George Hickenlooper and Fax Bahr‘s Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, more extras, a 48-page booklet, and yaddah-yaddah.

Can the reputation of the late Simon Monjack sink any lower? Yes! People is reporting that according to Brittany Murphy‘s former business manager and accountant Jeffrey Morgenroth, Monjack was “squandering the late actress’s fortune just before his own sudden death in May from pneumonia and anemia, which also killed Murphy.

“‘There were huge amounts of money in [Brittany’s] pension plan and bank account, and all of that’s gone,’ Morgenroth tells People. “I would see it on the statements. There was money being withdrawn by Simon, hundreds of thousands.” Monjack had spent nearly 80 percent of the 32-year-old star’s assets in the months between her death and his own, rattling the financial future of Murphy’s mom,” who technically inherited her daughter’s assets upon her death.

Every time I read about an attractive female school teacher getting popped for predatory behavior with a teenage male student, I frown and shake my head and mutter to myself, “If only I’d been so fortunate.” I was miserable when I was 15 or 16, and would have dropped to my knees and thanked God if I’d been hit on by a hot 40 year-old blonde of this calibre. And if I wasn’t interested I certainly wouldn’t rat her out by sharing her provocative photos with my friends. The authorities obviously aren’t “wrong” to enforce the law, but…well, I’ve said it.

As I stated yesterday, the controversy about the half-Jewish Oliver Stone being an alleged anti-Semite is hysterical and anti-historical and petering out as we speak. It follows that reported attempts by action-cartoon schlockmeister Haim Saban (of Saban Entertainment) to persuade big-wheel pallies to try and suppress Stone’s “A Secret History of America” Showtime series are the actions of a thug.

A Wrap story says that Saban has urged CBS chief Leslie Moonves, WME chairman Ari Emanuel and CAA partner Bryan Lourd to pull the series. Saban “said he considers Stone to be ‘clearly an anti-Semite and an anti-American,'” the Wrap story reports. ‘He has been consistent in his anti-American and anti-Semitic remarks. Anyone who works with this guy, should be ashamed of him/herself, and shouldn’t share that fact with their neighbors, or kids for that matter.”

Showtime execs themselves seem skittish about the show. This is indicated by the fact that (a) numerous reports have said that Stone’s history series will air later this year and yet (b) nothing comes up when you go to the Showtime site and do a search for “Secret History of the United States.”

Vulture‘s Emma Rosenblum has called Cathy Horyn‘s Sunday Styles profile of Jersey Shore costar Snooki “a cheap shot.” Horyn’s descriptions of this elfin egomaniac are “shocking,” she writes, because one never reads anything negative at all about any celebrity these days, but at the same time the piece is “an unnecessarily nasty takedown of a somewhat oblivious target.”

Jersey Shore costar Snooki (as photographed by Michael Falco for the N.Y. Times).

Except honest observation is honest observation, and a profile writer who doesn’t dispense this probably isn’t worth reading. The better ones, of course, do more than offer sharp descriptions of an interview subject — they also convey their personal reactions. And if you’ve had any first-hand experience with the younger reps of New York and New Jersey’s Guido and Guidette culture, as I have, you’ll recognize immediately that all Horyn did was lay it on the line. It’s called being straight. Why would anyone have a problem with that?

In my eyes Horyn wrote a close-up variation on what I’ve been noticing and mentioning from time to time since I moved to the New York area in November ’08, which is that the Italian or Latino-descended Snooki types seem, from a certain distance, to be all of a cultural piece — coarse, loud-speaking, un-read, garishly dressed, decidedly un-curious, under-educated, seemingly indifferent to anything or anyone outside of their immediate ego-sphere.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Only a racist thinks this way (right, Devin?), get off my lawn, and all the rest of those knee-jerk p.c. spitballs that get thrown at me every time I unload along these lines. I can only repeat that it felt awfully nice and soothing to read an article that called a spade a spade.

In so doing Horyn is now a member of that small club of nervy writers that I profiled in a 1992 Movieline piece about the New Journalism glory days (mid ’60s to early ’80s) called “Ten Interviews That Shook Hollywood.”

The piece offered summaries of the juiciest celebrity interviews I could find at the time. Among them were Truman Capote vs. Marlon Brando (“The Duke in His Domain,” The New Yorker, November 1957), Rex Reed vs. Warren Beatty (“Will The Real Warren Beatty Please Shut Up?,” Esquire, October 1967), Robin Green vs. Dennis Hopper (“Confessions of a Lesbian Chick,” Rolling Stone, May 1971), Tom Burke vs. Ryan O’Neal (“The Shiek of Malibu,” Esquire, September 1973), and Julie Baumgold vs. David Geffen (“The Winning of Cher,” Esquire, February 1975).

Here are first four pages of the article, which doesn’t exist online: Page #1, Page #2, Page #3, and Page #4.

I’m very sorry about Maury Chaykin‘s passing, which happened yesterday in Toronto. A seemingly kind and delicate fellow, Chaykin, 61, was best at conveying bottled-up rage. My two favorites in this vein are the software-programming beardo in War Games (with his rage directed at the Jerry Lewis-like Eddie Deezen) and his four appearances as Harvey Weingard (based on you-know-who) in Entourage.

He’s also quite good in George Hickenlooper‘s Casino Jack , which will play at the Toronto Film Festival. I know I’m supposed to rave about Chaykin’s Sam Blecher character in HBO’s Less Than Kind series, but I’ve never seen so much as an episode of that show.

Chaykin was a longtime Toronto resident, having moved there in the mid ’70s, and was a member in good standing of the Canadian club of filmmakers, actors, etc. Atom Egoyan cast Chaykin in The Sweet Hereafter, Exotica, Adoration, Where the Truth Lies , etc.