Jeff Wells

A three-minute informercial about Chris Nolan‘s Oppenheimer (Universal, 7.21) and especially about the technical grandeur of 70mm IMAX, addressing the technical immersives and whatnot, and they can’t specifically state which aspect ratio Oppenheimer will be shown in — the preferred 1.43:1 or the less preferred 1.78:1 or 1.90:1?

Hardcore 70mm IMAX has to be projected at 1.43:1…period. 1.43 is taller than fuck, and not that far away from classic “HE boxy” (i.e., 1.37 or 1.33). Trust me — it’s the only way to go.

1.78:1 or 1.90:1, which is how a significant portion of Nolan’s Dunkirk was presented, doesn’t get it.

How much of Dunkirk was presented within 1.43? Wikipage: “The film [used] both IMAX 65 mm and 65 mm large format film stock in Panavision System 65, with more IMAX footage than in any of Nolan’s previous films — an estimated 75%. The sparsity of dialogue made it possible for IMAX cameras, which are notoriously noisy, to be used as the primary format.”

I know that Dunkirk switches back and forth a lot between 1.90 and 1.43, and that my basic reaction was “why wasn’t it an all-IMAX thing?” I don’t want any of that shit when I see Oppenheimer — I want a pure 1.43 experience, start to finish.

The 1.90:1 aspect ratio, of course, is right next to 2:1, which Vittorio Storaro was a big supporter of (he called it Univisium). Fine, but 1.90 is not IMAX — not really.

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Casting-wise, blackwashing has been a thing since the woke dambreak of ’16 or ’17. For decades Hollywood adhered to whitewash casting, and now that European paleface culture has been identified and discredited as the root of all social evils, the tables have turned — simple enough.

But I wouldn’t call the latest alleged blackwashing rumpus — i.e., Nico Parker (daughter of Ol Parker and Thandiwe Newton) being cast as Astrid Hofferson in the forthcoming live-action version of How To Train Your Dragon — especially significant.

It’s a deal, okay, but a relatively small one. Not worth anyone getting into a twist.

True, Cressida Crowell‘s original children’s books were set in a Scandinavian Viking world, which for centuries has been a white-ass culture. (Just ask Kirk Douglas.) Ditto the 2010 Dreamworks animated version — white-ass Viking men and women from top to bottom. But the new social rules (including the doctrine of presentism) require that white-culture-based stories be reassessed and updated.

Casting directors understand that it’s politically safer to roll with diverse or multicultural mindsets, even if casting an actress of color as the heroine of a centuries-old Scandinavian saga defies any common understanding of Viking history.

Diminishing the visual presence of whiteness by going multicultural has been happening for six or seven years now (ratification of the Academy’s inclusion standards made it official in 2020). Politically speaking it boils down to this: if you don’t want industry people to give the side-eye, you need to play along.

Plus one other thing: Nico Parker was very good as the daughter of Pedro Pascal‘s Joel in HBO’s The Last Of Us.

Peter Yates The Friends of Eddie Coyle (’73), the Boston crime noir which HE has been praising for many years, will screen at Santa Monica’s Aero theatre on Sunday, June 4th. Pic opened a little less than 50 years ago — 6.26.73.

Director-screenwriter Larry Karaszewski will deliver a few introductory remarks prior to showtime.

My introductory remark is that the jacket art for Dave Grusin’s soundtrack album is misleading. A guy hanging one-handed from a gun barrel obviously alludes to a cliffhanger thriller of some sort. Eddie Coyle is emphatically not that. It’s a sullen, downbeat drama about cops, bad guys, wise guys, unlucky guys and all kinds of betrayal and mistrust.

Based on the George V. Higgins novel, it’s about Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum), an aging, bone-weary, lower-level weapons dealer who’s trying to make ends meet. Alas, Coyle is also looking at a long prison stretch for driving a truck with stolen goods. His only way out, he gradually realizes, is to rat out some of his “friends.”

One of the guys he’s selling to is Jimmy Scalise (Alex Rocco), the head of a gang that’s pulling off a series of bank robberies on the North Shore.

Here’s a taste of some of the George V. Higgins dialogue.

The following is a deliberate mangling and perversion of Patton Oswalt‘s recent commencement address at the College of William and Mary:

“To the graduating class of 2023, I have 59 words to share: Every new generation is appropriately and admirably intolerant of ugly currents in the human condition and concurrently determined to enhance, elevate or otherwise improve the quality of life or die trying, but are you guys aware right now of how deeply despised most of you are?…generationally speaking, at so young an age? By the vast majority of Americans, I mean, and not just your red-state types but damn near everyone.

“Your image is basically that of a bunch of entitled, judgmental, overly sensitive, whiny-ass little shits on social media, and this is why many of us hate your guts.

“Given, I mean, the apparent determination of a decent-sized portion of your graduating class to subject this once reasonably half-liberal, half-center-right country to a furthering of woke Stalinist terror….to keep the revival of China’s Great Cultural Revolution chugging along like a great 19th Century steam engine.

“You guys really need to stand up and take a bow…seriously.

“You are the first generation that has really and fully embraced a commitment to gulagism…to social isolation, humiliation and career suffocation for the wrong people.

“A 100% commitment to (a) “Are you now or have you ever been a person who doesn’t get it and therefore needs to have the shit beaten out of him/her on Twitter?”, (b) “Are you now or have you ever been disturbingly non-progressive, in some way out-of-step or guilty of insufficient understanding of a pressing social issue or agenda?”, (c) “Are you now or have you ever been some kind of closet discriminator…a person whose views are (or once were) politically retrograde, politically insensitive or in any way dismissive of any socially marginalized or discriminated-upon group?”

“I mean, you guys have a really steep hill in front of you. Democracy’s crumbling, truth is up for grabs, the planet’s trying to kill us and loneliness is driving everyone insane.

“You’re about to enter a hellscape where you will have to fight for every scrap of your humanity and dignity, and you do not have a choice to be anything but tyrannical and punitive to an extreme. Just ask Nikolai Lenin — he knew how to play tough cards. These are the times you’re living in right now, and many of us hope they’re bringing serious pain into your lives right now.

“It’s been truly amazing to see how your generation has rebelled against every bad habit of every generation that came before, reaching all the way back to the WWII ‘greatest generation’. Everything that the old farts have let calcify, you have kicked against and demolished. You’ve rejected that whole 24/7, no-days-off grind. You’ve rejected apathy. You’ve rejected ignoring your mental health because ‘you’ve gotta muscle through it no matter what’. You’ve rejected alienation and cruelty. You’ve rejected not trying to include everyone. And you’ve rejected not looking out for each other.

“Which is why millions really and truly depise you as we speak. Hell, I hate you from a certain perspective. Because your radical purity is truly awful and oppressive and unhinged.

“I can’t wait for you guys to get older and gradually put aside your specious bullshit. I can’t wait for your rigid ethical standards to gradually slacken and become compromised. I can’t wait for you to develop health issues.”

I identify as cisgender, fine, but I don’t think I want to identify as “cis” any more. The cisgender community (those who are not LGBTQ, trans, fluid, gender-nonconforming, whatever) represents around 95% of the populace, right? A few years ago the five-percenters decided that the 95-percenters have to identify as “cis”, which sounds like a blister or a boil. Who gave them this authority?

No offense but instead of “cis” I’d rather be known as an AUSG — an average, unassuming, straight grumpy guy who pops Cialis from time to time. What’s wrong with that?

@elder.blue_collar #question from @elder.blue_collar another installment of the insufferable ramblings of the left. Is gender a social construct? #theopendebate #fyp ♬ Morsmordre（莫斯莫多） – Crazy Donkey

Remember that Pauline Kael line that went something like “this is the kind of bad film that only a gifted director could make”? She was alluding to a strange capability among pantheon directors, which is the ability to make the occcasional stinker despite the odds favoring success.

Take, for example, Howard Hawks’ Monkey Business (’52) — a screwball comedy that leans way too far into silliness and absurdity and for the most part isn’t funny. Hawks got the mescaline comic chemistry right in Bringing Up Baby and Ball of Fire but somehow completely botched it here.

The basic unfunny idea is that an adult suddenly behaving like an adolescent is an embarrassment all around, and that “youth” is over-rated and that we’d all be better off being older and more settled and singing “we’re poor little lambs who’ve lost our way…baah-baah-baah.”

It’s about an accidentally concocted youth serum that turns everyone into an obstinate, obnoxious seven year old with no social disciplines.

Cary Grant’s seven-year-old personality is one thing, but early on he also acts like an 18 year-old who’s suddenly interested in Marilyn Monroe. It has something to do with the strength of dosage. In some cases (like Charles Coburn’s) the youth potion makes the recipient sexually frisky, or (in the case of Ginger Rogers) sexually competitve and jealous.

You know what might’ve helped? Shooting the damn thing in color. A color palette might have conveyed a certain spiritual uplift, a certain buoyancy.

Please name a few films that shouldn’t have failed given the pedigree of the talent (directors, writers, cast) but insisted on doing so regardless.

Nicole Holofcener‘s You Hurt My Feelings (A24, 5.26) is basically about an older writer named Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) who feels devastated when she accidentally overhears her therapist husband Don (Tobias Menzies) confess to a close friend that he doesn’t much care for her latest book.

This is a film, in short, about the necessity of supportive lying by those close to aspiring writers (lovers, family, spouses, good friends). Writers can’t reasonably expect honest assessments from anyone close, and there’s really only one way to play it if a significant-other writer asks for constructive criticism — you’ve no choice but to be positive and supportive because any kind of mixed or mezzo-mezzo response will only poison the well or drive a wedge between you.

On top of which if you’re possessed by any kind of real talent you would naturally understand this going in. If you’re any kind of solid, perceptive, grade-A writer you should know how good you are without being told, and if you don’t know this you’re probably a second-rater…be honest.

There’s no winning in intimate situations of this sort. As a rule artists never want to hear that their child is ugly or homely or under-developed or God forbid deformed, and like I just said if a writer doesn’t know this about their own kid they’re probably mediocre anyway and not worth the hassle. People close to you will never level with you about how good your writing is, mainly because every emotional instinct in their body is telling them “go easy, be supportive, be loyal and avoid blunt statements of any kind.”

Boiled down Holofcener’s film is approvable in a moderately satisfying way. It’s a perceptive, well-layered, occasionally amusing, engagingly acted film. But it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know going in. And it doesn’t have one of those big blow-out scenes…one of those scenes in which it all comes spilling out in one big gush.

Chris McKay‘s Renfield opened theatrically six or seven weeks ago. A financial and critical bust (cost $65 million to make, earned a domestic theatrical tally of $25 million), Renfield quickly acquired a toxic reputation. My reaction wasn’t so much one of disappointment or disapproval as one of great furious anger — I felt seriously enraged. I wanted to bolt after 20 minutes or so. I didn’t quite make it to the 50-minute mark.

Thoughts from esteemed director and fellow New Jerseyan Joe Dante, received early this morning: “Bad in ways I couldn’t have imagined…it stinks…;I’m still reeling.”

HE’s brief review was written inside Leows Lincoln Square just before catching Ari Aster‘s Beau Is Afraid, which I was unexpectedly knocked out by. Renfield is streaming and about to hit Bluray, etc. HE community reactions are hereby requested.

During HE’s thrilling but arduous Paris-Cannes adventure (5.11 through 5.30) I somehow found the idea of paywalliing content a bridge too far, so everything was wide open for that nearly three-week period. So the paywall returns starting today. Thanks to subscribers for understanding and hanging in there. I’m even starting to figure out HE’s travel strategy for Telluride ’23, which is only three months off.

The music of the late Ryuichi_Sakamoto (1952-2023) constituted significant portions of the soundtracks of three films by Alejandro G. Inarritu — Babel (’06), The Revenant (’15) and Bardo (’22).

I’m repeating my conviction that Sakamoto’s Revenant score is an all-time grand slammer, and that Sakamoto himself is one of the greatest.

I passed along my deepest condolences to Inarritu after Sakaomoto’s death a couple of months ago (3.28.23), and soon after Inarritu offered to send me Travesia, a compilation of 20 Sakamoto compositions that Inarritu curated at the invitation of Milan Records’ Jean Christophe and Sakamoto’s manager, Norika Sora.

The two-disc vinyl album arrived at HE’s Wilton residence a few days ago.

A brief essay by Inarritu is printed on one of the vinyl sleeves. Here’s an excerpt:

“I vividly recall the sensory, emotional experience I had when I first listened to Ryuichi Sakamoto in the fall of 1983. I was with A friend, Carlos Claussel, in a car in Mexico City, trapped in traffic hell in the Perferico (i.e., outer beltway) at 3 pm. Carlos put in a bootleg cassette of a Japanese composer neither of us had ever heard of.

“At first a few piano notes arrived like some kind of fresh, light rain, and from that [came] a mantric cadence and a sweet deep voice. It felt as if fingertips were penetrating my brain and giving me a cosmic massage, [one] that went through my body and dissolved everything that might have been wrong in my life back then.

“It was the theme from Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, and ever since that day a vital relation to Sakamoto’s music was within me. His work has become part of the soundtrack of my own existence.”

I don’t own a top-of-the-line vinyl turntable sound system at home (I make do with a Sonos sound bar), but a friend who lives nearby has an excellent sound system so that’ll be my way into this. Thanks to Alejandro for the gift, which I’ll cherish for the rest of my life. In early ’16 he also sent me a Revenant vinyl soundtrack album…thanks.

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HE totally supports the firing of those two female Lululemon employees who chased a pair of shoplifters and then called the cops on them. Shoplifters (especially young men of color) are definitely entitled to steal stuff, and employees who chase them or try to bust them are nothing but vigilante troublemakers.

🚨BOYCOTT: Two Lululemon employees were FIRED for chasing after shoplifters and calling the police on them in Atlanta.

Lululemon said it has a zero-tolerance policy for pursuing shoplifters at their stores.

Luckily the police were able to track down the robbers, who were later… pic.twitter.com/uSYXKjDTdb

— Phillip Oliver-Holz (Alpha Male) (@ThePhillipHolz) May 29, 2023