I’m seriously thinking about submitting a proposal for a book titled “Aspect Ratio Wars: The Epic Home-Video Battle Between Hollywood Elsewhere and 1.85 Fascism, and How The Good Guys Lost Despite The Support of the Movie Godz.” The hero (fighting for the concept of boxiness, oxygen and visual breathing room vs. dogmatic 1.85 claustrophobia) would be yours truly, fighting alone and standing alone against the Bob Furmanek-led mob. It’s a crazy, nonsensical story but it happened, and God knows how many classic films were cleavered and partly ruined as as result.

I could write this book in a month because it’s already been written in Hollywood Elsewhere portions. I would just have to refine and rephrase. The problem is that it would only sell about 1500 copies, as the number of people in the world who give a shit about aspect ratios probably doesn’t amount to more than four or five thousand, if that. I’m not even sure it would sell that much. But someone has to stand up and tell the truth about how Furmanek and his acolytes managed to convince home-video distributors to lop off God knows how many thousands of acres of visual material from God knows how many ’50s and ’60s films on Bluray.

Comment from “Heinz, the Baron Krauss von Espy“, originally posted on 7.17.12:

Jeffrey Wells grabs Roman Polanski by the shoulders and draws him close.

WELLS: I’m gonna ask you one more time, kitty cat — what’s the aspect ratio of Rosemary’s Baby?

POLANSKI (flatly): 1.85.

Wells strikes Polanski across the face, hard. He’s got his attention now.

WELLS: Stop lying to me, ya little fucker! What’s the aspect ratio?

POLANSKI: 1.66.

Notre Dame’s rector has said that the devastated cathedral “will be closed for five to six years.” Until 2024 or 2025. ($1 billion has been raised for the reconstruction.) You’ll notice that authorities have entirely blocked off Ile de la Cite. They can’t keep that rule in place for very long. Think of all the tourist joints (cafes, restaurants, souvenir sellers, gelato vendors) that are losing income as we speak.

I’ve stood and stared many times at this hallowed Paris monument over the last 40 years. My father visited me and my then-girlfriend Sophie in Paris in the summer of ’76. Notre Dame was black and sooty at the time, and my father’s first comment when he first laid eyes was “that’s it?” In January ’87 I climbed the winding, claustrophobia-inducing stairs inside one of the grand towers. The kids did the same when we visited in early ’00. My ex Maggie and I were married at St. Julien le Pauvre (the oldest church in Paris), just across the Seine. We stayed at Hotel Esmeralda. I also attended a Sunday mass sometime in the early aughts, and I’ll never forget that smoky incense aroma and the way an older French guy sitting next to me sang “aaahh-mehhn.”

I’ve spent the last 90 minutes “reading” (i.e., skimming through summaries of) the just-released Mueller Report, and I can’t do this all day. Not if I want to bang out my usual quota. But the special counsel’s carefully qualified conclusion that President Trump didn’t precisely or definitively collude or conspire with Russian operatives, or at least that there’s insufficient evidence to prove same, appears to be valid, if you want to be super-careful and extra-tippy-toe about it.

But Trump sure as hell obstructed justice here and there (what do you call firing James Comey over “this Russia thing“? serving justice?) and throw the fog and flim-flam around. He refused to be interviewed by Mueller’s team — what does that tell you?

The report certainly portrays Trump as peripherally dirty as hell in these myriad matters, and, if you ask me, as the same unruly, sociopathic, somewhat desperate conniver and opportunist whom we’ve all come to know a little better over the last three-plus years.

It certainly doesn’t gloss over the fact that his already-indicted or convicted minions aren’t literally covered in raw sewage or that Trump isn’t an extremely brutish, id-propelled, temperamentally undisciplined, craven, under-informed, financially unstable boss of a New York crime family. In the eyes of God, history and likely 2020 voters he’s almost certainly, in fact, royally fucked. Not to mention what Southern District of New York prosecutors will do after he leaves office.

I’m puzzled by a reported possibility that the report doesn’t look all that deeply or comprehensively at Trump empire finances, as most of what has happened over the last four, five or six years, Russia-wise, has been about money. Trump ran for the Presidency to boost his brand, after all — that was the basic plan all along. Defeating Hillary was an “uh-oh, what do we do now?” moment.

Here’s the report. It’s going to take a while to sift through everything. Please post any comments, conclusions, curious insights or special uncoverings.

“FIFOG (Festival Internationale du Film Oriental de Geneve) runs from 4.29 through 5.5, but who uses the ‘o’ word these days? The last time was when Paul Schrader used it in a late March Facebook post (“I’ve written or directed films with a black lead, an oriental lead, a female lead,” etc.) Before that was during a viewing of What’s Up, Tiger Lily?.” — posted on 4.11.19.

Even though Quentin Tarantino‘s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood wasn’t announced as a Cannes Film Festival selection this morning, Hollywood Elsewhere is confident it’ll be included. (A well-positioned little bird has told me not to sweat it.) What I’d like to know is, what the hell happened to Pablo Larrain‘s Ema, which also wasn’t announced? Was it deep-sixed, as rumored, because of an alleged Netflix acquisition?

As expected, Pedro Almodovar,’s Pain and Glory and Terrence Malick‘s A Hidden Life were also announced, in addition to Dexter Fletcher‘s out-of-competition Rocketman and Jim Jarmusch‘s previously confirmed The Dead Don’t Die (competition), which will open the festival on Tuesday, 5.15.

HE is all hopped up about Marco Bellocchio‘s The Traitor, allegedly some kind of Godfather-ish crime and betrayal flick.

I’m also regarding Nicolas Winding Refn‘s non-competitive Too Old to Die Young — North of Hollywood, West of Hell warily, but with a muted excitement. It’s not a feature but a segment or two from an Amazon crime drama series, starring Miles Teller and Billy Baldwin, that’s slated to pop on 6.14.19.

HE regrets to confirm that Xavier Dolan‘s Matthias & Maxime is now an official competition selection, as Dolan has almost always infuriated me, the exception being Mommy, which I was half-okay with despite hating the lead performance.

Ditto Bong Joon Ho‘s Parasite (competition), as HE had enormous problems with the grotesque, family-friendly Okja (“A well-directed megaplex movie for kids, and cliche-ridden like a sonuvabtich”). I respected but didn’t exactly surge with pleasure over Snowpiercer and The Host, but…well, BJH just rubs me the wrong way. Always has, always will.

Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne‘s The Young Ahmed will also play in competition….the respectably relentless Dardennes! Not to mention Ken Loach‘s Sorry We Missed You…Loach! And Ira Sachs‘ Frankie.

I’m not down on my knees but what happened to Benedict Andrews‘ Against All Enemies, the Jean Seberg movie with Kristen Stewart?

A bit short of 20 years ago I attended an all-media screening of The Phantom Menace at the now-vanished National in Westwood. I emerged a bit stunned, struggling for words. Eventually my head clarified and my thoughts took shape. I looked up at the night sky and vowed to expel Jake Lloyd from my movie-watching realm for the rest of my days.

At the very least The Phantom Menace launched the beginnings of an industry-wide realization — a process that took many, many years to reach fruition and maturity — that George Lucas was creatively over and had in fact become a kind of malevolent force. Whatever genuine inspiration he had inside him during the making of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back had escaped, leaving him more or less hollow and adrift and adept only at marketing and manufacturing and screwing up Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Who saw Topher Grace’s 85-Minute Prequel Re-Edit? I never did.

Hollywood Elsewhere finally gets to see Olivia Wilde‘s Booksmart (Annapurna, 5.24) next week. I’m frankly more excited about this than any other spring-early summer release. The expectation for this Rotten Tomatoes grand-slammer is that it’ll put some color back into Annapurna’s financial cheeks.

With the sharply ascendant Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever, plus Jessica Williams, Billie Lourd, Lisa Kudrow, Will Forte and Jason Sudeikis.

From Eric Kohn’s 3.11 SXSW review: “The teen party movie has been done and redone so many times it may as well be an algorithm, so every new movie that rises to the challenge faces heavier expectations. Booksmart, yet another buddy movie about one wild night at the end of high school, confronts these odds with a savage wit that never slows down.”

Booksmart director Olivia Wilde outside Castro Theatre last night, prior to San Francisco Film Festival screening.

Two big reveals will happen tomorrow morning — the initial roster of 2019 Cannes Film Festival selections (probably without the Tarantino) plus the (heavily?) redacted Barr version of the Mueller Report. There will actually be two versions of the redacted special counsel report, with one being released to the public and one that will eventually go to a limited number of members of Congress with fewer redactions. Cannes first, and then Mueller.

I feel a little funny about posting a Tucker Carlson excerpt (4.16), but no one else has spoken frankly about how the MSM has all but abandoned Beto O’Rourke over the last three weeks and moved over to Pete Buttigieg, the new squeeze.

Carlson: “How it must feel to be Beto right now? You’re running really hard for President, giving speech after speech every day, riding your skateboard for the camera. And then one day you wake up and discover that your one true love, the American news media, has called it off…they’ve left you for a younger, hotter candidate…went out for a pack of cigarettes and just never came home.”

HE take: Carlson isn’t wrong, but after everyone gets used to BUDDHA-judge and O’Rourke learns to refine his hand movements and sharpens his stump speech and especially after the debates begin in the fall, things will settle down and even out.

Four years ago I made a case for 1971 being one of the best movie years of all time. In June ’07 I presented a similar argument for 1962, which is easily at par with 1939. One could make an equally strong case for 2007. All to say that 1999 films, great and nourishing as they always will be, have been a tad overhyped over the last decade or so.

Brian Raftery‘s “Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen” (which went on sale two days ago) is the latest example of this.

My 1999 roster — Election, The Matrix, Fight Club, American Beauty, The Limey, The Sixth Sense, Magnolia, The Straight Story, The Cradle Will Rock, Run Lola Run, Any Given Sunday, The Hurricane, Three Kings, The Insider, Being John Malkovich, The Thin Red Line, Eyes Wide Shut, The Blair Witch Project, October Sky, Abrej Los Ojos and The Lovers on the Bridge — comes to 21, which is obviously stellar and significant.

But there are 25 films on my 2007 list — American Gangster, Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead, No Country for Old Men, Once, Superbad, Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood, Things We Lost in the Fire, Zodiac, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Atonement, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, I’m Not There, Sicko, Eastern Promises, The Bourne Ultimatum, Control, The Orphanage, 28 Weeks Later, In The Valley of Elah, Ratatouille, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Darjeeling Limited, Knocked Up and Sweeney Todd. Just as strong as ’99, and perhaps a touch better.

The pauses in this scene — the moments when De Niro just stares at Keitel with an expression that’s somewhere between morally appalled and oddly perplexed — are what make it interesting. Sometimes vague detections of what’s inside of a character are more gripping than watching that character let it all out. This plus the spiky flattop, checked shirt, white T-shirt, jeans and spit-shined brown leather boots.