Five and one-third years ago Woody Allen saved George Stevens‘ Shane from an aspect-ratio slicing that would have rocked the classic cinema universe and resulted in a great hue and cry from the Movie Godz. When all is said and done and the Chalamets of the world have all been put to bed, this is one of the events that will burnish and solidify Allen’s legacy.

On 3.16.13 I revealed that George Stevens, Jr. and Warner Home Entertaiment restoration guy Ned Price were intending to release a Bluray of the classic 1953 western using a 1.66:1 aspect ratio, which would have cleavered the tops and bottoms of the original 1.37 photography by dp Loyal Griggs. I howled and screamed in my usual way, but nothing seemed to change until Allen, the only top-dog, world-class director to step into this fray, shared his opinion on 4.4.13.

On 3.29 I appealed for help from Martin Scorsese in an open letter. On 4.4 I posted the Allen letter. 13 days later Joseph McBride’s letter to Stevens, Jr., deploring WHE’s intention to present the film within a 1.66 a.r., was posted. Later that day Price threw in the towel and announced that WHE’s Shane Bluray would be released in the original 1.37 aspect ratio. I’ve long believed that Allen’s opinion was the crucial factor in rectifying this situation.

Three versions of Shane were included in a 2015 Masters of Cinema Bluray (Griggs’ original 1.37:1 capturing on disc one + 1.66:1 theatrical presentation + an alternate 1.66:1 framing optimized for this ratio, supervised by George Stevens, Jr., on disc two).

Below is Shane‘s bar fight scene in the original 1.37 a.r.; further below is the same scene sliced down to 1.66.

This morning I read a week-old Guardian piece about the most successful movie formula — i.e., “man in a hole.” Part of the article reads like an Onion satire, but the author, Mark Brown, is dealing straight cards.

Ignore the lede and consider the second sentence: “After analyzing data from 6,147 movie scripts and filtering it through a series of algorithms, a team of UK scientists has identified the emotional arc that makes the most money, called the ‘man in a hole’ arc.”

This sounds reasonable and most likely accurate. Stories about characters gradually pulling themselves out of a bad situation (Tender Mercies, 12 Years A Slave, Birdman, Gladiator, Places in the Heart, Ordinary People, Warren Beatty and Buck Henry‘s Heaven Can Wait, Slumdog Millionaire, The Verdict, Zero Dark Thirty) always deliver a measure of comfort if not a balm to the soul.

The howler arrives in the third sentence: “[This discovery] could be game-changing for both film producers and audiences, said Ganna Pogrebna, a professor of behavioral economics and data science at the University of Birmingham, who led the research team. ‘We know that when we talk about movie production it is a small group of people that make decisions for the viewers. We were essentially trying to listen to the viewer, to see what they actually want.”

Brown explains that the Birmingham scientists have “categorized movies according to six emotional profiles or clusters, which were previously applied to novels.

“These are (1) rags to riches — an ongoing emotional rise as seen in films such as The Shawshank Redemption; (2) riches to rags — an ongoing emotional fall; (3) Man in a hole; (4) Icarus – a rise followed by a fall (On the Waterfront); (5) Cinderella — a rise followed by a fall followed by a rise (Babe); and (6) Oedipus, a fall followed by a rise followed by a fall (All About My Mother).”

Pogbrena believes that “riches to rags movies could be financially successful if they’re epic and made with a huge budget, such as Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies.” He’s also concluded that “Icarus films are most successful with a low budget, and that Oedipus films do not do well at awards ceremonies.”

The research data claims that The Godfather is a “man in a hole” movie, or one in which the lead character (i.e., Michael Corleone) starts out more or less happy or at least content, falls into a pit of danger and misfortune and then gradually climbs out of it. In fact Francis Coppola‘s 1972 film has two lead characters — Marlon Brando‘s Vito Corleone + Al Pacino‘s heir apparent — who experience this fate.

“The normal rules of politics do apply to Donald Trump, after all.

“Four years ago, he became the fifth man to win the presidency while losing the popular vote. Now he becomes the fourth of those five — along with John Quincy Adams, Rutherford Hayes and Benjamin Harrison — to serve only a single term, and to be unpopular during most of it. The exception is George W. Bush, who benefited from being a wartime president.

“In hindsight, the extraordinary nature of the circumstances that propelled Trump in 2016 have become obvious: the unpopularity of his opponent, Hillary Clinton; the help from Russia; the late involvement of James Comey, the then-F.B.I. director who now hosts an ABC talk show; and Trump’s razor-thin victories in several states.

“Without that good fortune this year, Trump still won roughly 90 percent of self-identified Republicans and Republican-leaning voters. Yet it was not nearly enough.

“’Trump said he was going to fix things, and he didn’t,’ said Kevin O’Reilly, 54, of Manchester, N.H., who voted for Barack Obama in 2012, Trump in 2016 and Elizabeth Warren this year. ‘I don’t think he really cares about the middle class. He cares about himself.'” — from David Leonhardt‘s “How Trump Lost Re-election in 2020,” posted in N.Y. Times on 7.29.

It’s been seven days since my stolen iPhone 6s Plus was blacklisted (i.e., deactivated) through AT&T, and the losers at Apple are still dragging their feet, scratching their heads and not correcting the 8 Plus passcode situation.

Ten days ago Michael Newman, friend and tech ally of that name-brand director friend (i.e., “Mr. Hotshot“), told me to forward the IMEI # of the stolen iPhone 6 Plus to the AT&T people and ask them to kill it. Which I did. The thinking was that once Apple iCloud technicians understood that the stolen iPhone 6 Plus was no longer a working device, much less a valid or trusted one, the Apple security passcode lockout problem (caused by Apple’s six-digit, second-step security code being continually if nonsensically sent to the thief who stole the iPhone 6 Plus on 7.5) would stop being an issue. Apple would then send me the six-digit passcode and everything would be jake.

Except it’s not, thanks to Apple procedure and professionalism. Things are still tangled up in blue.

HE to Mike: “How can Apple fail to recognize or act upon the obvious and proven, which is that (a) the iPhone 6 Plus was stolen and bricked, (b) the same iPhone 6 Plus has been killed — rendered inactive — by AT&T and therefore needs to be un-trusted by Apple, and that (c) the six-digit verification code therefore needs to be texted to MY phone?

“It’s very simple now. It’s obvious. It’s all settled and figured out. I’ve forwarded proof of theft and proof of purchase of the iPhone 6 Plus and 8 Plus, etc. So what’s the problem? The Apple people are perverse. It’s like they have some kind of disease.”

Mike to HE: “At this point the phone itself is out of the picture. Now it’s the phone number” — the thief’s, ending in 9114 — “that needs to be removed from the account. Previously the escalation to the security group happened, but they were confused between the iPhone 8 receipt and the 6s that was stolen. They will call me Monday. We are 90% there. Hang in there — will speak to you Monday afternoon.”

HE to Mike: “I hear you & thanks so very much again. I’m hanging in there. One question: How could those brainiacs possibly be ‘confused between the iPhone 8 receipt and the 6s that was stolen’? Receipt of purchase for both phones has been provided. The iPhone 6s Plus was bought on 9.6.16 in New York City (receipt provided), and the current iPhone 8 Plus was purchased at the West Hollywood Grove Apple store on 7.5.18 (receipt provided). There’s just no possible basis for confusion. Everything is quite clear in the notes and documents they’ve been sent.”

A friend and I wandered around downtown Ridgefield, Connecticut yesterday afternoon. It’s a little more culturally complex than it used to be, but it’s still a whitebread town for the most part. Victorian homes, huge front and side lawns, super-tall trees that have been here since the Revolutionary War. Ridgefield hasn’t become an outdoor mall like Westport; it still has a certain leafy, affluent, quirky-liberal personality.

Not that I’ve ever given a damn, but Bonomo Turkish Taffy peaked in the ’50s and ’60s, was discontinued in 1989 and returned to the market in 2010.

Benedict Andrews‘ Against All Enemies, a political thriller about the FBI’s harassment of Jean Seberg (Kristen Stewart) over her support of the Black Panthers and sexual involvement with black power activist Hakim Jamal (Anthony Mackie), has been shooting since late June. The screenplay is by Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse; the dp is Rachel Morrison (Black Panther, Mudbound). Pic costars Jack O’Connell, Margaret Qualley, Colm Meaney, Zazie Beetz, Vince Vaughn and Yvan Attal as Romain Gary, whom Seberg was more or less married to at the time of her death in Paris on 8.30.79, at age 40. An all-but-guaranteed presence a year from now at Venice, Telluride or Toronto, one would think.

I’m too consumed with loathing for the habits of Average Joe moviegoers (texters, noisy eaters, drink-slurpers, constant bathroom-breakers, late arrivers, chit-chatters) to be interested in catching commercial screenings with any regularity. Hence my lack of interest in Sinemania, AMC Stubs-a-List, the all-but-defunct Moviepass, et. al. Attending all-media screenings in New York and Los Angeles is coarse enough. Otherwise give me elite film-festival screenings, press viewings in the usual small private rooms, streaming on the 65″ Sony HDR, etc.

Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, quoted in David Smith‘s 7.20 Guardian article, “Do Republicans disapprove of Trump’s meeting with Putin? ‘They couldn’t care less‘”: “You’ve got to really examine the flyover states. They couldn’t care less about what happened in Russia. They love this guy, they think this guy’s for them. These are low information emotional voters and they like what they see in the president. They think he’s working for them.”

The best thing about this non-teaser for Matthew Weiner‘s The Romanoffs is the music. Beyond this my reaction is basically “what?” An Amazon anthology series debuting on 10.12, The Romanoffs “centers on separate stories about people who believe themselves to be descendants of the Russian royal family.” In other words, people who (a) believe themselves to be hot shit in some primal, genetic way and (b) need the Russian royal blood association to augment a frail sense of self-worth. Socially insecure people are interesting subjects for a $70 million series? Costarring Aaron Eckhart, Christina Hendricks, Isabelle Huppert, Jack Huston, Marthe Keller, Diane Lane, Amanda Peet, Paul Reiser, John Slattery, Corey Stoll, Noah Wyle, Kathryn Hahn, Mary Kay Place, Griffin Dunne, Ron Livingston, etc.

I’ve barely thought about Orlando Bloom over the last decade or so, no offense. I tuned out after Elizabethtown (’05), and stayed that way during all those Pirates of the Caribbean and Hobbitt films. Over the last 13 years I’ve tended to regard Bloom as a good-looking Buddhist party brah who fucks hot actresses. An actor who had serious heat during a four-year, early-aughts period (Black Hawk Down, Troy, Kingdom of Heaven) before disaster struck. But now he’s back.

Three days ago Bloom returned from the Land of the Dead because of what he did during a performance of Tracy Letts’ Killer Joe at the Trafalgar Studio One. Bloom stopped the show twice to tell an audience member to put away her iPad. “I need you to put [that] iPad away now!” Bloom reportedly bellowed from the stage. But she didn’t and so Bloom declared two or three minutes later, “Put that fucking iPad away now and I will wait.”

The woman in question was apparently using the iPad to fan herself as the Trafalgar a.c. was on the fritz, but no matter. In HE’s view Bloom has suddenly become a person of fibre, backbone, consequence. Let his career comeback begin today. All hail Orlando Bloom, a man among men — a dude with standards, a guy who snapped and said to himself “no! fuck this…her iPad goes or I walk off the stage.” Words can’t convey the respect I suddenly feel for the guy.

Killer Joe began its London run on 5.18l18, and deliver the final performance on 8.18.18. Nine days later Bloom begins filming Rod Lurie‘s The Outpost, playing an American officer in Afghanistan.

This is the second trailer for The Meg (Warner Bros., 8.10) and they’re still only showing snips and shards of the beast. The trailer cutters are obviously reluctant to show too much. All I’m really getting from this are goofball vibes. Nine years ago the History Channel aired a show on Predator X, the aquatic superbeast that swam the seas and ate everything and everybody some 147 million years ago. 50 feet long, 99,000 pounds, foot-long teeth, four flippers, etc. If someone had made a film about this guy but in the vein of John Sayles‘ Alligator, which is to say adult and knowing but with a slight wink, I’d have been happy.