In his review of Criterion’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller Bluray, DVD Beaver’s Gary W. Tooze, who always emphasizes the positive and almost always bends over backwards to minimize adverse judgment, seems to be expressing displeasure, at least as far as my understanding of the English language is concerned. He’s not exactly panning the Criterion Bluray but he’s certainly not jumping for joy. Be honest — how do you feel about buying a Bluray that makes a film look “occasionally greenish and sometimes very brown, flat, dull and thick“?

Tooze recalls that during a Toronto Bell Lightbox panel in 2014, McCabe dp Vilmos Zsigmond said that “if they had movies in [the frontier] days they would look faded away, scratchy, grainy and very soft and no contrast.” To achieve this look Zsigmond used flashing (exposing negative to light) to underexpose the film. And so, Tooze writes, “we have a brief understanding of how McCabe & Mrs. Miller was intended to visually appear. The final product, he acknowledges, is “probably wholly authentic to the filmmakers’ wishes.”

I get and respect the misty, somber, brownishly subdued, lantern-lit rainy thing, but “occasionally greenish”?

The supermarket tabs announcing an imminent Brangelina breakup has been a non-thing for years (glance at and dismiss the check-out headlines in less than two seconds) but once in a blue moon these mustard-gas stories turn out to be right. Or more precisely the National Enquirer nails it. Last December the Enquirer breathlessly bannered a $450 divorcement settlement story (said to be rooted in cheating), but then it was denied two months later. But today legit news orgs said it’s true, and, according to Page Six, the split happened over Angie having learned through a private investigator that Brad was putting the high hard one to Marion Cotillard, his Allied costar. If nothing else this domestic tragedy (their kids Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, Knox and Vivienne will suffer bruises) will almost certainly boost Allied‘s box-office, but will it harm or hurt whatever awards-related opportunities it might have? Robert Zemeckis‘ World War II drama, distributed by Paramount, pops on 11.23.

Jennifer Lawrence to Chris Pratt at 39-second mark: “So why did you give up the rye funner?” The question makes Pratt uncomfortable; ditto Michael Sheen, the leg-less robot bartender. Me too but for a different reason. I’ve read the Passengers script twice, and I don’t have clue #1 what a “rye funner” is. So this morning I re-read the date scene (pages 63 and 64) and…you guessed it, no “rye funner.” I’m sure someone will explain.

Q: Name three movie characters who would closely resemble you if they were all blended together into one person?  Not looks-wise but in terms of character, attitude.

A: Edmond O’Brien in D.O.A., James Stewart / Charles Lindbergh in The Spirit of St. Louis & Tony Curtis’s Joe in Some Like It Hot.   C’est moi.  Two more:  Cary Grant’s Devlin in Notorious, Steve McQueen’s Jake Holman in The Sand Pebbles.

Warren Beatty will drive up to Goleta on Thursday, December 1st to receive the 11th annual Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Beatty will be obliged to pose for…what, 35 or 40 selfies?  More?  All the award-season blogaroonies will be there, of course, along with the creme de la creme of leading Santa Barbara citizens. Beatty will be honored for his long and storied career, but the main agenda will be to boost the award-season profile of Rules Don’t Apply, which he directed, produced, co-wrote and stars in. Rules will open the 2016 AFI Fest and open commercially on 11.23.  Beatty is an excellent guy to shoot the shit with for hours on end, and is indisputably one of the great legendary figures of 20th Century filmmaking, politics, culture.

I’m presuming Orange Hitler will lose by a nosehair in the general election, but no matter what happens I’d like @ArthouseTrump to hang around. He’s an asshole, but at the same time he treads the line between truth and boorishness like a mountain goat. I lost it when I read his tweet about Rob Reiner‘s LBJ being the poor man’s All The Way.

You can’t even order Twilight Time’s Stardust Memories Bluray yet, but a limited run of 3000 copies will street on 12.13. I was right there with Woody on the gloom train when I first saw it. I was insecure, right on the edge of poverty, behind in my rent, certain of nothing, my head barely above water. Now I’m more or less on the champagne train with Sharon Stone. Well, kinda. (I said hi to Stone a few weeks ago at a screening of that Frank Zappa doc.) I can say with absolute confidence that I’ll never be back on the gloom train again. Or at least not the kind I was on in 1980.

I was surprised to see Martin Scorsese‘s Silence ranked among Kris Tapley‘s top Best Picture spitballs. (Along with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Fences, Florence Foster Jenkins, Hidden Figures, La La Land, Lion, Live By Night, Manchester by the Sea and Moonlight.) Last August I speculated that Silence (which story-wise is no stroll in the park) might get a year-end platform release at best. Yeah, I know — Marty is still cutting it and until he finishes it won’t be dated. This is Scorsese’s pattern. The fate of The Wolf of Wall Street was up in the air until it screened on 11.29 — that’s when it was ready and that’s when it screened.

The Tracking Board has reported that Relativity’s Dana Brunetti intends to remake Fred Zinneman‘s High Noon, and that he’ll be using a contemporary plot with drug cartel goons (i.e., the new Frank Miller gang) coming for a Will Kane-like figure who’s scared but won’t back down. Brunetti is proceeding properly by having purchased the rights from Karen Kramer, widow of original High Noon producer Stanley Kramer.

But wait a minute, man. Three months ago I reviewed Ari Issler and Ben Snyder‘s 11:55, which played at the L.A, Film Festival, and I’m telling you it’s a straight-up High Noon remake and a fairly decent one at that. And it involves drug dealers.

11:55 was actually the third High Noon remake. Howard Hawks‘ Rio Bravo (’59) was the first. (Hawks made it clear time and again that he set out to make his own version of High Noon.) Then came Peter Hyams‘ Outland (’81), which was set aboard a space-station cargo vessel of some kind with Sean Connery as Gary Cooper. So Brunetti’s version, if and when it happens, will be the fourth remake.

It’s common knowledge that William Wyler‘s Ben-Hur (’59) was shot in Camera 65, which when correctly projected (as well as scanned for DVD and Bluray) delivered an aspect ratio of 2.76:1. (Same a.r. with Ultra Panavision 70, which The Hateful Eight was shot and projected at.) All my adult life I’ve been looking to see the full-whack, 2.76:1 Ben-Hur in a first-rate theatrical venue.

My hopes were up when I attended last night’s 7:30 pm screening of Ben-Hur at the American Cinematheque Egyptian. I was encouraged by the fact that the AC was showing a DCP, or the same digitally remastered version that constitutes the current Bluray, which delivers the full 2.76:1. But they blew it all the same. The AC aspect ratio was, at most, 2.55:1, and it was probably closer to 2.4:1. And therefore each shot felt slightly cramped and wrong.

Robert Surtees‘ 2.76:1 images on the Ben-Hur Bluray are immaculate — the framings in each and every scene are exquisitely balanced. But whack those images down to 2.4:1 and everything looks fucked. If Surtees had been with me he would have been hooting and throwing soft-drink containers at the screen.

The same aspect ratio problems manifested when I caught Ben-Hur at the New York Film Festival in 2011, to wit:

Excerpt: “The fabled 2.76 to 1 aspect ratio was not delivered. It looked to me like we were seeing roughly a 2.55 to 1 image, at best. There’s a shot with Hugh Griffith and the four white horses when Heston enters from the left and says ‘What magnificent animals’ or words to that effect. I knew right away what I saw wasn’t right because Heston was slightly cropped off as he said this line — he didn’t have any breathing room — and you NEVER crop a star.”