Jeff Wells

Teal Vandals Have Infected Criterion’s 4K “Eyes Wide Shut”

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The ghost of Stanley Kubrick is choking, hissing and sputtering over the apparent teal-tinting in portions of Criterion’s 4K Eyes Wide Shut disc, which pops on 11.25.25.

I’ve seen Eyes Wide Shut at least eight or nine times (twice theatrically, once or twice on DVD, the rest via WHE’s unrated 2008 Bluray), and the blue-and-amber nocturnal accent scheme has always been the same.

Nocturnal accent colors adorning the wooden window-sill-and-frames of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman‘s bedroom, the window sill-and-frame lighting outside of Sydney Pollack‘s pool room salon, the bluish-amber tints in the Harford kitchen…we’re talking lots of blue and amber. Unmistakably.

Remember the iron-bar gates of that Long Island estate where the orgy was held? They were painted vivid, bordering-on-radiant blue, and with a fresh coast of paint at that.

But the proverbial teal monster has reared its revoltingly ugly and disgusting head in Criterion’s forthcoming 4K version of this 1999 film.

A DVD Beaver rendering of a still from that daylit scene (Cruise staring at the gates) shows a distinct teal flavoring — the gates were luminous plain blue in an older version, but now they’re unmistakably a dark somber teal-green.

Even the frequently obsequious and kowtowing Gary W. Tooze, owner and proprietor of DVD Beaver, admits in his review that the Criterion 4K “does have some teal-leaning.”

Quickie “Blob Me Tender” FX Are 20 Times Better Than ’58 Original’s

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“For the diner scene, a photograph of the building was put on a gyroscopically operated table onto which cameras had been mounted. The table was shaken and the oozy Blob stuff rolled off. When the film negative was printed in reverse, it appeared to be oozing over the building.

“The Blob was filmed in color and projected at a 1.66 ratio, then known as the ‘Paramount format’.” — from The Blob‘s Wiki page.

If A Film is About An Approaching Nuclear Missile…

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In Sidney Lumet‘s Fail Safe (’64), New York City gets nuked at the very end. In Kathryn Bigelow‘s A House of Dynamite (now streaming on Neflix), Chicago is in the nuclear crosshairs.

Fair question for those who’ve seen Lumet’s 61-year-old film: What would your reaction have been if there was no dramatization or depiction of the terrible nuclear climax? What if Lumet had decided to cut the last 8 to 10 minutes?

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HE’s Best Supporting Actor Keepers

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The top five or six will do, thanks.

Stellan Skarsgard‘s flawed, charmingly neurotic, brazenly egoistic dad in Sentimental Value is likely to win.

Sean Penn‘s Lt. Col, Steven J. Lockjaw is a broad, stiff-backed caricature and not really a performance that yields any depth or sensitivity, but he’ll be nominated anyway because there’s a lot of lickspittle One Battle After Another kowtowing going on right now.

You know which OBAA player should be nominated in this category? Benicio del Toro‘s “Sensei”.

Paul Mescal‘s William Shakespeare in Hamnet will be nominated — I recognize this, no disputing.

Adam Sandler‘s Jay Kelly performance as a manager of a flaky big-name Hollywood actor deserves to be nominated, and he will be.

I sill haven’t seen Deliver Me From Nowhere, but it’s been obvious for several weeks that Jeremy Strong‘s performance as Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau…it’s been obvious from the get-go that he’d be nominated.

“On Eighth Avenue, No One Can Hear You Scream”

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I have a faint memory of Spy magazine running a smirk piece about the Manhattan-based Troma Entertainment, which made cheap-ass, Z-grade schlocksploitation horror comedies.

The article appeared sometime in the mid to late ‘80s, and was ostensibly written by a guy who wrote an actual script for Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman, the predators who ran Troma.

Does anyone recall this article? Or was it published by someone else?

Obsessive Grain Fetishists

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There’s something really and truly wrong with 4K Bluray enthusiasts who get almost sexually aroused by stand-out, golfball-sized grain. Or, as I’ve called it for many years, “Egyptian grainstorms” by way of delta swamp mosquitos.

I would love it if WHE would release a 4K Eyes Wide Shut in a boxy (1.37:1) format.

Best Wedding Scene Ignored By Pinterest Dingbats

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The wedding scene that concludes The Best Years of Our Lives is easily the most emotionally affecting in Hollywood history…easily. And yet a list of the 15 Most Pinned Wedding Scenes on Pinterest ignored it in favor of…not worth mentioning. I’m not saying the people who voted are idiots, but they’re certainly ignorant.

Trump’s Fascist Ballroom

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My first impression of Donald Trump‘s super-sized, east-wing-of-the-White House ballroom, which will be constructed over the next two or three years, is that it’s distasteful in a grandiose, fascist–palace sort of way.

If you ask me the architectural envisionings vaguely resemble that gleaming, palace-like structure of emphatic pomposity — am I thinking of Vittorio Emanuele II or Benito Mussolini‘s Palazzo Venezia? — located just north of the Foro Romano.

Renderings suggest an oversized, overreaching quality — the ballroom seems to want to compete with the scale of the main White House itself. The East Wing is supposed to be an adjunct structure, right? It’s not supposed to be an architectural competitor.

HE’s Supporting Actress Preferences in

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Why is Teyana Taylor (aka Perfidia Beverly Hills in One Battle After Another) at the top of Gold Derby’s Best Supporting Actress contenders list? Be honest — her performance is nervy or pushy or flashy as far as it goes, but it’s not all that great altogether….please. So why is she in the #1 position?

Roofman‘s Kirsten Dunst is Gold Derby’s 22nd-ranked Best Supporting Actress contender….bullshit! One, in a fair and just world she would be in the Best Actress category, and second, she’s delivered in Roofman what could arguably be called her best big-screen performance ever.

Weapons‘ Amy Madigan is fifth-ranked on the GD roster, but she should be the #1 contender…hands down.

Sentimental Value‘s Elle Fanning is in the #2 slot…deserved!

Why is Wicked: For Good‘s Ariana Grande in the #3 position? People of taste and worldly experience don’t even want to endure the viewing of Wicked: For Good, much less trudge into the Grande weeds all over again in the wake of last year’s award-season campaign.

Sentimental Value‘s Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas is in fourth place…fine.

I haven’t seen Marty Supreme so I’ve no opinion about the sixth-ranked Gwyneth Paltrow‘s chances for a Best Supporting Actress nomination.

These seven actresses — Dunst, Madigan, Fanning, Taylor, Grande, Lilleaas, Paltrow — are the only serious contenders in this category thus far.

Filling Out “Gatecrashers” Form

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And here are HE’s preferential Best Picture rankings as we speak…not Academy predictions but personal heartfelt preferences:

Best Picture: 1. Sentimental Value; 2. Weapons; 3. Marty Supreme (haven’t seen it, spitballing on blind faith); 4. Nouvelle Vague; 5. Roofman; 6. One Battle After Another; 7. Hamnet (haven’t seen it, trusting ectastic buzz); 8. Warfare; 9. Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (haven’t seen it); 10. Jay Kelly.

Can I just spit it out? 2025 has been kind of a weak year. Feels that way, at least.

You know what I’m doing? I’m going with emotional default choices. I’m not thinking it all through — I’m basically asking myself “what’s the easiest, most defaulty choice I can make?”

There’s nothing lower in the universe than to try to predict what the Academy and guild goons are going to prefer. Go with your own heart and determinations!

“Poor boy, when you’re dead you don’t take nothin’ with you ‘cept your memories of having wasted your life while trying to predict who and what AMPAS members will vote for” — from John Lennon and Yoko Ono‘s “The Ballad of John and Yoko”.

Excerpt from HE’s 4.10.25 Warfare rreview: “One of the SEALS is Joseph Quinn‘s ‘Sam’, and while I felt terribly for the poor guy (in actuality, back in ’06) and his ghastly leg wounds (he moans and wails a lot and who could blame him?) but to be perfectly honest I was also whispering to Quinn, ‘I’m sorry for your character’s terrible pain but on another level you, Joseph Quinn, almost deserve it because you’ll be playing George Harrison for Sam Mendes, and you don’t even faintly resemble Harrison…alabaster skin, auburn hair, eyes that couldn’t be more different than Harrison’s deep browns.”

Surreal Explanation

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JFK’s AI voice is perfect…”back theah…behind the fence on the grassy knoll.” Truly impressive.

“‘Cheap Texas Broads’ Meets Old-Man Feet“, posted on 6.2.22 but originally posted from Hue (Vietnam) on 11.19.13:

I was reminded of a famous JFK quote when I read Cathy Horyn’s 11.14.13 N.Y. Times piece about the legend and the whereabouts of Jackie Kennedy‘s pink suit (“a classic cardigan-style Chanel with navy lapels”) that she wore on 11.22.63.

In an interview with Death of a President author William Manchester, Mrs. Kennedy recalled that her husband wanted her to make a stylistic statement during their Dallas visit. “There are going to be all these rich Republican women at [a lunch they were scheduled to attend], wearing mink coats and diamond bracelets,” JFK told her. “[So] be simple — show those cheap Texas broads what good taste really is.”

In a subsequent dispute with publishers of Manchester’s book, Mrs. Kennedy managed to dilute “cheap Texas broads” into “rich Texas broads” and then “those Texans.”

I’m mentioning the original quote because (a) it makes JFK seem more human and less iconic and (b) because I relate to withering aesthetic judgments. It reminded me that Kennedy was capable of remarking how gauche or clueless some people dressed. It suggests that had he survived into his 90s and found himself at my rooftop restaurant in Hue — I realize this sounds like a stretch but it isn’t really — he too would have been appalled at the sight of old-man feet inside rubber and leather sandals. Not to mention the shorts and the golf shirts. Maybe.

Glenn Kenny: “One hears a lot of dumb, gratuitous and outright asshole-ish ‘JFK, c’est moi’ statements over the course of a lifetime, but this one really has a certain je ne sais quoi.”

6.6.22 explanation: I posted this four days before the 50th anniversary of JFK’s murder, when historical perspective essays were flooding the internets. I was recoiling from the sight of sandaled old-man feet at this Hue hotel, and so my free-associating mind wondered “how would a 96 year-old JFK had reacted to such a sight?” I’m confident that he would’ve felt that even in Vietnam, ugly, unpedicured man toes should always be concealed.