On Sunday, 11.19 HE will attend a special screening of Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Man Who Knew Too Much — a 4K UHD restoration supervised by restoration guru Robert Harris.

It’s happening at the Bedford Playhouse at 1 pm.

Aside from the enhanced clarity and color, the presentation will also contain the original Perspecta stereo sound mix, which hasn’t been heard since the original 1956 release in first-run theatres. TMWKTM will be projected in 4K Super VistaVision. Bring the kids!

A q & a with Harris and Janet Maslin will follow the screening.

The night before last a friend who had seen Ridley Scott‘s Napoleon and scratched his heasd over Joaquin Phoenix‘s lead performance, said “what is driving Napoleon?…what is he out to accomplish?” Scott’s film never lays the French general’s cards on the table, but another film did….

Napoleon: “I judge my conduct by my conscience, and my conscience is not troubled. Day by day I too gave my life for my country. I made war in order to secure peace. Not for a year but for a dozen centuries. I dreamed of the United States of Europe. Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, Poles, Russians and all the others. One law, one coin and one people. Was that so rash a dream?”

The screenwriter was Daniel Taradash (winner of Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for From Here to Eternity), the actor was Marlon Brando, and the film was Henry Koster‘s Desiree (’54). Could the dialogue have been more complex, or less staid and simplistic? Sure but at least it gives you an idea of where Taradash’s Napoleon was coming from.

The scene in question begins at the one hour and 45 minute mark…close to the end.

…but she sorta kinda wishes that David Grann‘s saga had been directed by, say, a full-blood Osage helmer instead…no offense. Martin Scorsese did the best that he could, she’s saying, given his white-guy limitations and the curious focus on Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Ernest Burkhart.

The director of Goodfellas, Mean Streets, Casino, The Departed and The Wolf of Wall Street warrants respect, she’s saying — an A for effort.

“Marty is a titan, but he’s not bigger than history,” Gladstone has told Variety‘s Selome Hailu.

“He’s a major shaper of it though. It’s the tricky nature of a story like this. You have more representation [in Killers], but coming from somebody who’s not from the community. So you always have to look at it with a different angle. And there’s nothing wrong with that. You just have to be very aware of the film that you’re watching and what lens it was made through.”

Do you want to look at those black, soul-dead eyes for four or eight years? Eyes that would fit right into a Blumhouse horror film? Forget it, man. Manchin doesn’t have it.

I’ve been waiting a long time for the “Princess Diana dies in Paris with Dodi Fayed” chapter of The Crown, and now it’s finally streaming with the towering Elizabeth Debicki in the title role. The first half of it, I mean. The final episodes stream in December.)

The fatal car crash in the tunnel can’t skirt what happened — it has to be real. The ending will presumably cover the same material as Stephen Frear‘s The Queen (’06….17 years ago!) but without Helen Mirren‘s elk moment.

I was working at People magazine when Diana began seeing Fayed in July 1997. Two or three of us were asked to make some calls and prepare a file on the guy. Within three or four hours I’d learned that Fayed was an irresponsible playboy, didn’t pay his bills on occasion, lacked vision and maturity and basically wasn’t a man. And yet Diana overlooked this or didn’t want to know. And that’s why she died. She orchestrated her demise by choosing a profligate immature asshole for a boyfriend.

Fayed was just foolish and insecure enough, jet-setting around with his father’s millions and looking to play the protective stud by saving Diana from the paparazzi, to put her in harm’s way. It all came to a head on that fateful night in Paris. Fayed told his drunken chauffeur to try and outrun a bunch of easily finessable scumbag photographers on scooters, and we all know the rest.

Out of respect for the great Ridley Scott it would appear that Napoleon (Apple, 11.22) is finished as a would-be Oscar contender, and that Joaquin Phoenix‘s Best Actor chances are not just dead in the water but over the waterfall and banging against the rocks.

Pay no attention to the industry whores who are praising Scott’s film to the heavens. They’re just not being honest.  Half-and-half responses are okay however.

The film includes a height joke or two, but very little is made of Napoleon’s short stature (he was somewhere around 5’6″ or roughly Alan Ladd‘s size) or, for that matter, the psychology of the Napoleon complex (i.e., short guys aggressively trying to compensate). The fact that Phoenix stands around 5’8″ doesn’t seem to matter either way.

I’m still recommending that interested parties give Marlon Brando‘s Napoleon Bonaparte a whirl. Henry Koster‘s Desiree (’54) is a mediocre costume epic, yes, but in a certain laborious, stiff-necked way it’s almost more tolerable than Scott’s film.

From David Fear’s 11.8 Rolling Stone piece about David Fincher’s The Killer:

A case has already been made that David Fincher‘s The Killer is a stylistic and spiritual kin — a close kindred spirit — of certain other elite crime noirs — films whose basic situations could be described as “solitary hardcase dude not only does it his own way but is seriously effective in the matter of revenge and settling scores and turning the tables.”

The primary examples that come to mind are John Boorman‘s Point Blank, Mike Hodges’ Get Carter, Michael Mann‘s Thief, Jean-Pierre Melville‘s Le Samourai, John Flynn‘s The Outfit and Don Siegel‘s Charley Varrick — seven including the Fincher. Agreed?