Daily

Aldenreich…Baahh!

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Today (3.28) the Guardian published a Solo assessment piece by Ben Child — “Is the Han Solo Star Wars Spin-off Spiralling Towards Disaster?” The headline suggests a hit piece, but it’s actually more of a “maybe it didn’t work out or maybe it did” thing.

A few hours ago director-producer Robert Meyer Burnett attempted to burnish Solo‘s rep with the following tweet: “Folks, a very trusted friend who saw Solo in a very unfinished state at a ‘friends and family’ screening said it was really good, had everything you wanted to see (even how the Falcon interior got so dirty) and even Alden Ehrenreich does a fine job.”

HE response #1: Never trust the opinion of anyone who’s attended a friends-and-family screening because they wouldn’t have been invited in the first place if they weren’t in the tank.

HE response #2: Burnett’s “very trusted friend” saw “a very unfinished” version? Saw it when? Relatively recently or sometime last year or what? If it’s the latter something’s wrong because Solo opens in eight weeks (i.e., 5.25) so the friends-and-family crowd — if they saw it, say, sometime in February or early March — should been shown a nearly finished version, given the nearness of the release date.

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Not So Fast On That 70mm “2001” Mastering

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It’s been announced that Cannes Classics will host the world premiere of an unrestored 70mm print of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey on Saturday, 5.12.18, in the midst of the forthcoming Cannes Film Festival.

A new but not restored 70mm print of 2001, struck from “new printing elements made from the original camera negative”, will be shown. An official festival release says that the idea is to “present the cinematic event audiences experienced 50 years ago.” The 70mm Cannes print, created by Warner Bros. with supervision by director Chris Nolan (who will introduce the film at the special Cannes screening), “is a true photochemical film recreation — no digital tricks, remastered effects or revisionist edits.”

Sounds like a reasonable idea, but restoration guru Robert Harris (Lawrence of Arabia, Vertigo, Spartacus, Rear Window) says “non…c’est des conneries. C’est pour les nerds de cinema.”

The new 70mm print they’ll be showing in Cannes “will not look like 2001 did in 1968,” Harris claims. “My problems with the project are not with what’s being done, or how it’s being done. It’s with the verbiage of the press release. It can’t be an authentic recreation of how the film looked 50 years ago for any number of reasons. Color stocks, black levels and grain structure are different now, color temperature of the lamps has changed but can be adapted. They were using carbon arc lamps in ’68 and they aren’t now, and on top of everything else the film stock is different — the stock used for original prints was a stock that arrived back in 1962. And so the images will ironically look too clear.”

(Harris is speculating, for example, that Cannes audiences might see that Dr. Heywood Floyd‘s floating pen is actually mounted on a circular piece of lucite or glass, which the original ’68 film didn’t have the resolution to deliver.)

“What they show may be beautiful — I’d like it to be — but they’re not working from the original camera negative, which has been badly damaged,” Harris explains. “They’re working from ‘new printing elements’ taken from the original negative, which basically means a fourth-generation print. All original prints were struck from the camera original. They won’t be using the original film stock that the original 2001 was printed on, which was Eastman 5385, a 1962 film stock, that had appropriate film grain to the way the film had been designed. So it’s not off the negative, they don’t have the original film stock, and they’re be making it off a dupe rather than using 4K or 8K files.

“All of that noted, stocks are so good today that the fact that a print is fourth-generation may not matter.”

Final Harris thought: The promising news is that FotoKem, the lab producing the elements, does superb work, so in the end everything should look wonderful, if a bit shop-worn. Most important thing is that the skies must be black, black, black!”

2001: A Space Odyssey will also return to U.S. theaters in 70mm beginning on 5.18.18. But why not in uprezzed IMAX, fellas? 2001 freaks worldwide would cheer this.

Rosanne Conner, Staunch Bumblefuck

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I paid no attention to the revived Rosanne until reading that the debut episode beat Stormy Daniels on 60 Minutes. The thing everyone is latching onto, of course, is that Rosanne Conner (like Rosanne Barr herself) is a Trumpster.

The show deserves credit, I suppose, for being honest enough to say that some working-class Middle Americans (like Conner) are the personification of the American Heart of Darkness — under-informed, racially resentful, short-sighted, bull-headed and obviously self-destructive. The Rosanne of 2018 is the new Archie Bunker.

That’s a good thing in a way. I respect the honesty of the show’s approach. There are obviously some real assholes out there in the hinterland, and at least the show’s producers are throwing that into the hopper. During last January’s TV critics confab Barr said, “I’ve always attempted to portray a realistic portrait of the American people and of working-class people. And, in fact, it was working-class people who elected Trump.”

But I shouldn’t say any more until I watch a couple of episodes. I understand that the first episode was political but two episodes that follow aren’t. Which HE regulars have seen the show, and what’s the reaction so far?

“No Sale” for Bailey’s Accuser

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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Tuesday evening that an accusation of inappropriate touching against Academy president John Bailey has been investigated and found wanting. In other words Bailey is officially off the hook — i.e., Henry Fonda during the last ten minutes of The Wrong Man.

Bailey’s accuser hasn’t been identified and most likely never will be, but this sounds like the first high-profile accusation of sexual misbehavior to have been discredited in quite a while.

In an in-house memo distributed on Friday, 3.23, Bailey stated that a woman had complained about a single incident that happened more than a decade ago. She alleged that Bailey had “attempted” some sort of inappropriate physical contact while she and the legendary dp were riding in a transport van on a movie set.

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Eff You, Dad…No Offense

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“Mark Raso’s Kodachrome, a road-trip dramedy, reunites an acclaimed, dying photojournalist (Ed Harris) with his estranged, record company executive son (Jason Sudeikis) as they journey across the American heartland.

“Shot on 35mm, and full of odes to the greatness of analog technology, Kodachrome isn’t nearly as cranky as it sounds, and thanks to likable performances from Sudeikis, Harris and Elizabeth Olsen, it’s an entirely watchable if entirely by-the-numbers throwback to the sweet-and-sour Sundance-style indie films of yore. But there’s a blurry boundary between ‘vintage’ and simply ‘passé,’ and Kodachrome is too often caught on the wrong side of that line.” — from Andrew Barker‘s Variety review, posted on 9.8.17.

I’d see this if I knew that Olsen’s character doesn’t wind up boinking Sudeikis or, better yet, doesn’t do Sudeikis at all but shows Harris a little third-act mercy because he’s dying of liver cancer. Or she does them both — how about that? Anything unusual would suffice.

Costarring Bruce Greenwood, Wendy Crewson and Dennis Haysbert. Premiering on Netflix on 4.20.

Laugh If You Want

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If only I’d surrendered myself to the guitar in my early to mid teens. Then I could’ve been the cool guy who could play like this at parties, and I could’ve done much better with the girls. Instead I became a mediocre trumpet player and then, in my late teens and early 20s, a mediocre drummer. I was a half-decent writer in junior and senior high, but the light didn’t go on. I got into sketching around eight or nine, but I never felt the current. When I was 16 or 17 I took a summer class at Silvermine Arts Center; part of the curriculum was sketching nude female models. Then I helped edit a 16mm film called “Beyond Embarassment.” Then I got into writing again in my early 20s, and finally I began to feel it. But I still feel bad about not learning guitar.

Instant Guillotine

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“Are we really going to have only capital punishment?,” IAC chairman Barry Diller asks Maureen Dowd in 3.24 N.Y. Times profile. “Because right now, that’s what we have. You get accused, you’re obliterated. Charlie Rose ceases to exist.”

I was going to say something along these lines, but I was afraid of the Robespierres. Sexual harassment and misconduct are really bad things, and should never be waved away. But so is driving under the influence, which flirts with destruction and death and all kinds of horrible. If you’re busted for D.U.I. you’ll get fined, your license can be suspended for up to six months and you could go to jail (48 hours to six months). But if the D.U.I penalty was the same as that for sexual harassment or misconduct, the inebriated offender would be taken straight to the hanging tree.


Barry Diller, as pictured in the 3.24 Dowd profile.

Sexual offenders should receive stiff or even harsh punishment, depending on the particulars, but I don’t think their throats should be slit like chickens. After a suitable penalty and/or period of discomfort they should be allowed to show contrition, to demonstrate their remorse and willingness to grow and transcend, to show that they’re not arrogant hooligans. The punishment, in short, should be stern but not overly savage.

“I see it in our companies, where the relationships between people are changing,” Mr. Diller says. “We recently had a formal complaint made by a woman who said that she was at a convention with her colleagues and she was asked to have a drink with her boss. Period. That was the complaint. And we said, ‘Here’s the thing. Anybody can ask you anything, other than let’s presume something illegal, and you have the right to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ If it’s ‘Yes,’ go in good health and if it’s ‘No’ then it’s full stop.’

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Get It Right

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The title of Adam McKay‘s forthcoming political drama about the diabolical and Machiavellian Dick Cheney is Backseat — not Back Seat. Annapurna will release it on 12.14.18, which is a little late in the season.

A grotesquely bulked-up Christian Bale as Cheney, Amy Adams as wife Lynne Cheney, Oscar champ Sam Rockwell as George W. Bush, Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Pullman as Nelson Rockefeller, Alison Pill as daughter Mary Cheney and — wait for it — Tyler Perry as Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Executive Suite

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What intrigues me about Succession, an upcoming HBO original series launching in June, is that it comes from irreverent British writer Jesse Armstrong (The Thick of It, In the Loop, Four Lions). The Big Short‘s Adam McKay directed the pilot, executive produced with Will Ferrell.

Within ten seconds you want Jeremy Strong‘s character, a Type-A prick and Son of the Big Man who wants it all, to be crushed. The imperturbable Brian Cox plays Big Daddy. Costarring Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook, Nicholas Braun, Matthew Macfadyen and Hiam Abbass.

Executive Suite was a 1954 Robert Wise drama about the internal struggle for control of a furniture manufacturing company after the CEO croaks. Costarring William Holden, June Allyson, Barbara Stanwyck, Fredric March and Walter Pidgeon.

Worst Of Times

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Yesterday on Facebook HE’s own Jordan Ruimy lashed out at the shallowness and repetition of the twenty-teens. “As the end of the decade approaches, I fear we’ve basically gone through the worst decade for American movies since the ’80s. It’s a good thing TV is going through an incredible golden age that far surpasses most of the stuff being released in theaters.”

Naturally there’s a corresponding Hadley Freeman piece in the Guardian today: “From Top Gun to Stand By Me: Why the 1980s Is My Favorite Film Decade.”

Remember that Paul Schrader quote from a 2016 Little White Lies interview: “In the ’70s it wasn’t that the films were better, it was the audiences.”

Ruimy response from Tony Joe Stemme: “It’s easy to blame Hollywood for the lack of substantive, reality-based movies that get made, but the blame is squarely on audiences. They’re the ones that have made adult-themed dramas and comedies practically extinct. Folks see only superhero, sci-fi, fantasy and animated features? That’s what Hollywood is going to make. Kramer vs. Kramer made $400M in adjusted gross to today’s dollars. FOUR HUNDRED MILLION. For a divorce drama. Would a movie like that make even a quarter of that today?? Doubtful. Look in the mirror.”

Posted on 8.25.17: “117 Films That’ve made The 21st Century Worth Living“. Posted on 4.22.16: “Best Films of Second Decade of 21st Century…So Far.”

Hopper, As It Were

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The size of the diner in Edward Hopper‘s “Nighthawks“, particularly for one allegedly based on an actual diner somewhere in the West Village, has always struck me as cavernous. More like an art gallery abruptly transformed into a greasy spoon. Sure enough, in a 1962 interview with Art Institute of Chicago’s Katherine Kuh, Hopper said the painting “was suggested by a restaurant on Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet.” He added, “I simplified the scene a great deal, and made the restaurant bigger.”