For some arcane reason Steven Soderbergh has created a mash-up of Alfred Hitchcock‘s Psycho (’60) and Gus Van Sant‘s color Psycho remake (’98). I guess you could call this an interesting experiment. I never much liked the Van Sant because he didn’t really remake the Hitchcock classic frame-for-frame — he fiddled with the particulars. “Lowery? I am dying of thirstaroonie.”

Again, the URL.

Last night Gavin Smith‘s Film Comment Selects series screened a double-header under the title “Healthcare Mayhem” — Blake Edwards‘ mediocre The Carey Treatment (’72), a Boston-set James Coburn drama that no one ever has to see or contemplate ever again, and a “pink” print of Paddy Chayefsky‘s (and Arthur Hiller‘s) The Hospital (’71). Smith is coping with personality issues that prevent him from communicating like an adult, but I’m told that both 35mm prints were supplied by Quentin Tarantino.

After being indifferent for the longest time I’m now looking to drown myself in Martin Luther King scripts. Ava Duvernay‘s rewrite of Selma that Oprah Winfrey will be producing for Paramount. The Oliver Stone-authored revision of a King biopic (i.e, the one with Jamie Foxx attached) that was turned down by DreamWorks and Warner Bros. because it was too candid or revealing about King’s private life. And Paul Greengrass‘s Memphis project (i.e., the last days of MLK before his assassination that was on and off and then on and then off). I’ll even settle for an e-mail or call from someone who’s either read all the versions or has at least read coverage of same. I’ve heard all along that the Greengrass script is the best of them, but I’d like to dig in a bit and learn a bit more.

Darren Aronofsky had no choice when he set about designing Noah’s Ark for Noah (Paramount, 3.28). It couldn’t even vaguely resemble that perfectly designed, tanker-sized wooden vessel that Steve Carell built in Tom Shadyac‘s Evan Almighty (’07). And, of course, it had to look like something that could have actually been built by Average Joes in ancient times, and not something built by professional 21st Century shipbuilders in Nova Scotia, which is what the Evan Ark resembled. But Aronofsky’s Ark doesn’t look at all like something built to float. It looks like some kind of primitive warehouse or fortress. Men have known about the principles of ship-building since the dawn of the oldest civilization, and principle #1 was that all ships need a rounded bottom of some kind. So what is this?

Ark in Darren Aronofsky’s Noah (Paramount, 3.28).

Ark in Tom Shadyac’s Evan Almighty (’07).

I’m not a big fan of true-life tales of characters surviving painful, ghastly ordeals. You know going in they’re going to make it through or why else would a movie have been made? So you pay your $14 bucks, you sit down and you’re stuck with the main character, suffering through this and that, nearly starving or being tortured or whatever agonies he/she endured. We can presume that the message of Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken (which Universal is releasing next Christmas) is that you can’t give up, you have to survive, tenacity is everything, etc. Yeah, that’s true. But why do I have to experience Louis Zamperini’s World War II ordeal? What’s in it for me?

There was one chance to save Non-Stop (Universal, 2.28), the latest action thriller starring Liam “Paycheck” Neeson…one chance to make it into something half-special or at least surprising. Neeson plays Bill Marks, an alcoholic air marshall on a New York-to-London flight. Before the plane is over Maine he’s dealing with a secret texter on the plane who’s threatening to kill passengers unless the airline transfers $150 million to his account. But it’s soon learned that the account is in Marks’ name, and before you know it the news channels are reporting that Marks is the bad guy. Or is perhaps a good guy with an evil twin or a split personality…something. He’s not, of course — nobody is going to pay Neeson eight figures to play the villain. But it would’ve been cool if the film had bitten the bullet and gone dark and subverted expectations. That, at least, would have woken me up.

Last night Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone posted a report about a Vanity Fair-sponsored Oscar bloggers panel that happened yesterday afternoon, and the “bombshell” of that event, says Stone, came when veteran publicist Peggy Siegel, who’s been staging toney Oscar-related gatherings in Manhattan for many years and who kibbitzes with Academy members and journalists constantly, “said that voters she spoke with (and remember, she goes to EVERYTHING) could not even bring themselves to watch 12 Years a Slave. You have to watch it, she would urge them. But they would hold up their hands and say ‘I can’t!'”

(l. to. r.) VF host/moderator Mike Hogan, Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson, Deadline‘s Pete Hammond, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Vulture‘s Kyle Buchanan.

(l. to.r.) Peggy Siegel, Vanity Fair contributor Krysta Smith, Fandango‘s Dave Karger.

To me that sounds like bad news for Slave and the Fox Searchlight team, but what do I know?

I’ll tell you what I know. For decades members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have made themselves infamous for succumbing to soft, tepid emotional impulses in their voting for Oscar winners, but lately it’s gotten worse. It seemed for a while that they were getting braver by giving Best Picture Oscars to The Hurt Locker and No Country For Old Men, but the last three years have been crushing with Best Picture honors going to The King’s Speech, The Artist and Argo. And now (I hate to say it but it’s probably true) effing Gravity. Academy folk like what they like and don’t give a damn about what history will say or what people outside the narrow little AMPAS culture think about their mediocre aesthetic standards.

The problem with the Academy can be boiled down to the “deadwood” members — the over-the-hill crowd that doesn’t work that much (if at all) and whose tastes are conservative and smug and myopic. These people, I’m convinced, have been refusing all along to get past themselves and bow down and show 12 Years A Slave the respect and praise it absolutely deserves. Steve McQueen and John Ridley‘s film is honest and searing and, yes, at times difficult to watch, but it’s brilliantly sculpted and superbly acted and profoundly affecting if you let it in. But the old farts have been stand-offish if not hostile from the get-go. Dollars to donuts they’ve all voted for Gravity or American Hustle or even Philomena, but…well, nobody knows anything but my guess is that Siegel’s comment probably speaks volumes.

Filmmakers and audiences who believe that dramas are all about thud and glumness and heavy-osity and that comedies are all about froth and silliness and the sound of farts are really quite clueless. We can all be thankful that the late Harold Ramis was not among them. “I’ve always thought that comedy was just another dramatic expression,” he told Believermag‘s Eric Spitznagel in a curiously undated q & a. “I try to measure the amount of truth in a work rather than just looking at the generic distinction between comedy and drama. There’s a lot of bullshit drama out there that leaves you totally cold. And there’s a lot of wasted comedy time too. But when you get something honest, it doesn’t matter what label you give it. Look at a movie like Sideways, which is funny and still so painful. It points to the idea that life is full of ambiguity. Most people live somewhere on the spectrum of anxiety and depression.”

Roughly two weeks before the 20th Academy Award ceremony at the Shrine Auditorium on March 20, 1948, a Harper‘s article by Raymond Chandler appeared (or was filed) about the Oscars — the cultural legacy, Chandler’s belief in the artistic potential of films, his personal experience at a previous ceremony, etc. Chandler, on the verge of his 60th birthday, had co-written Double Indemnity with Billy Wilder five years previously; two years hence he would work unhappily with Alfred Hitchcock (i.e., “that fat bastard”) on Strangers on a Train. Here’s an excerpt:

About 40% into the trailer Gyorgy Ligeti‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey music kicks in. (A little lazy, no?) The script openly references 1954 as the year when “something was unleashed” (or words to that effect), which of course is the year when the original Gojira opened in Japan. The seawater effects are the highlights, I think. So Mr. Godzilla attacks New York and San Francisco? Why not some smaller cities? Why not Savannah, New Orleans, Tampa or Portland? Why not Corpus Christi?

Web/graphic designer Christian Annyas has today posted a visual history showing the evolution of the Warner Bros. logo over the last 90 years. The first Warner Bros. studio opened on Sunset Boulevard in 1918. But it wasn’t until 4.4.23 when Warner Brothers Pictures was formally incorporated. It’s ironic that 70 to 80 years ago Warner Bros. was known as the studio that specialized in tough, socially realistic movies (particularly in the 1930s about gangsters and underdogs and working-class characters). What is Warner Bros. known for today, for the most part? Aside from the Oscar-nominated Gravity and Her, it mainly churns out corporate superhero CG-driven fantasy-franchise films aimed at GenX and GenY submentals.

Ken Russsell‘s Women in Love (’69), indisputably his greatest film, can only be seen via a MGM Home Video DVD issued in 2003 and via occasional showings on TCM. There’s no Bluray, and no high-def streaming via Vudu, Netflix or Hulu Plus. There should be. The cinematography by Billy Williams (Gandhi, On Golden Pond) demands a meticulous high-def remastering. Women in Love is one of the most sensual films ever made about men, woman and relationships (and I’m not just talking about nude wrestling scene between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates), and one of the most anguished in portraying the sadnesses and frustrations that plague so many relationships and marriages. It’s also one of the first mainstream films to really explore and dramatize the lives and longings of free-spirited, semi-emancipated 20th Century women (i.e., Glenda Jackson‘s Isadora Duncan-like Gudrun and Jennie Linden‘s somewhat more conservative Ursula) in a historical context.