Maybe after I finally see Ryan Coogler‘s film in Cannes (after being shut out of two screenings at Sundance 2013), I’ll understand why the title was changed by Weinstein Co. marketers from Fruitvale to Fruitvale Station. I’m guessing it’s because Fruitvale sounds rural, like something to do with agriculture and working on a fruit farm, and Fruitvale Station sounds more urban. Pic is based on the true story of Oscar Grant, a young guys who was killed by the bulls at the Fruitvale rapid transit station in the Oakland area on New Year’s Day in 2009.

My disappointed response to the lackluster look of The Great Escape at last month’s TCM Classic Film Festival has been echoed by the reviews of the MGM/Fox Bluray, which came out yesterday. It’s relatively rare when Bluray reviewers will actually say “this blows,” but High-Def Digest’s Michael S. Palmer and Bluray.com’s Michael Reuben have essentially said this in their reviews. DVD Beaver’s Gary W. Tooze was more obliging, but he tends to flatter almost everything he sees.

How many years have I been belly-aching about the absence of a From Here to Eternity Bluray, despite Sony’s Grover Crisp having remastered this 1953 Best Picture winner sometime in early to mid 2009? My first “where’s the Bluray?” piece ran in November 2009. I’ve run two or three follow-ups since. Anyway, the endless delaying is over. Sony Home Video is finally releasing it on a Region 2 British disc on 10.7.13. Perhaps a Region A U.S. version will follow a few months later.

I finally saw Crisp’s high-def version on Turner Classic Movies last February. It’s clearly a significant enhancement over the DVD version that everyone has been looking at for the last 11 years or so. “Prettier”, less contrasty, smoother skin tones, greater specificity (especially in terms of the fabrics, hair follicles and the glistening look of rain-soaked streets) and so on. I like my Blurays to “pop” above and beyond what i’m used to from DVD versions, and Crisp’s Eternity definitely does that.

I’ll never own a 3D TV and if someone gave me one I probably wouldn’t pop for the forthcoming Wizard of Oz 3D Bluray. But I’d be lying if I said I’m not curious how it’ll look. Partly because I was so taken with the opening black-and-white 3D section of Oz, The Great And Powerful. Keep in mind, also, that a serious quality-level 3D conversion is difficult and expensive.

Maybe they’ll open this on a limited theatrical basis before the disc comes out, which will happen in either September or October.

16 year-old Asa Butterfield was 13 or 14 when he began shooting Martin Scorsese‘s Hugo, when he had a wide-eyed innocent look. Now as the titular, pint-sized hero in Ender’s Game, he looks like a young Elvis Costello. (Offscreen he wears Costello-styled glasses.) Dystopian sci-fi CG pic costars Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Viola Davis, Hailee Steinfeld and Abigail Breslin. Obviously cookie-cutterish. A cousin of Oblivion and Elysium with a “precocious Luke Skywalker-ish kid becoming a warrior” storyline.

A few hours ago the first trailer for Lee Daniels‘ The Butler (Weinstein Co., 10.18) appeared online. The famous-faces biopic is sketchily based on the life of White House butler Eugene Allen, who served in the White House beginning in 1952 and worked until 1986. (Allen died in 2008 at age 90.) The trailer’s tone indicates that the film will exude the tidy, homogenized sensibilities of The Help, some depictions of cotton-field racism a la Roots and perhaps the schmaltzy emotionality that some of us associate with The Color Purple.

Robin Williams as Presidetn Dwight D. Eisenhower.

John Cusack as President Richard M,. Nixon.

Alan Rickman as President Ronald Reagan.

Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan.

Liev Schrieber as President Lyndon B. Johnson.

An invitation received earlier today for an Inside Llewyn Davis Cannes luncheon (mum on the particulars) may indicate the look of the official ad art.

“Don’t believe the hate,” says Marshall Fine about the critically-pummelled The Great Gatsby. “It’s not a terrible film; indeed, it’s a surprisingly affecting one. And I’m no Luhrmann apologist. I’m one of those who thought Moulin Rouge was silly and overrated. As for his indigestible Australia from 2008, well, at least the continent itself survived.

“Yet I found myself pulled into the emotional world of Luhrmann’s Gatsby despite only a couple of really outstanding performances and an in-your-face phoniness to the imagery which the film wears as a badge of honor. In translating F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel about the 1920s, Luhrmann turns it into an indictment of conspicuous consumption and the erosion of the human spirit that inevitably results.

“In spite of the trappings of 3D and a Jay-Z-infused soundtrack, Luhrmann finds the beating heart at the center of this overstuffed enterprise. It rests firmly in the person of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jay Gatsby, who single-handedly breathes life into a film that is nearly sunk by the glum Carey Mulligan and the lightweight Tobey Maguire.

“DiCaprio’s Gatsby is still an untrustworthy weasel with delusions of grandeur and a willingness to do almost anything to get what he wants — but his collapse, when that ruthlessness proves his undoing, is that much more moving because of the heft DiCaprio brings to the role. See it for DiCaprio and you won’t be sorry.”

I was suffering from sleep-deprived midday fatigue all through today’s drive back to Berlin. Mr. Sandman wouldn’t quit trying. I doused my eyes with Murine, bought two Red Bulls at a rest stop and chugged them down, and sharply slapped myself on the face a dozen or so times. But at least the ordeal yielded three extremely gripping video clips. I’m kidding, of course — they’re tedious. But this is what it was.

It’s 9:55 am and I now have to get in the car and begin the three-hour drive back to Berlin. What have I been doing in Bad Grund, Germany for the last 40 hours? I can’t say until late June. I can only divulge non-explicit incidentals. Green forests and hiking and sitting in outdoor plazas and ordering salads and hanging out and filing stories in a big breakfast room. I can’t say much more than that. Them’s the rules. Update: In an absolutely non-related development, here is today’s front page of the Harz Kurier.

I’m fairly certain that before too long Hollywood Elsewhere will be two-thirds of a traditional reading experience, and one-third of a you-are-there, it’s-all-happening-right-now Google Glass experience — a video camera mounted on my glasses with a live feed going straight to an HE live screen and showing whatever’s going on — whatever’s being seen, heard and said in a walking-around social context (events, premieres, screenings, parties, interviews and randoms minus the private stuff.)

I honestly believe this will start to happen by late 2014 or mid-2015 at the latest. I think that just printed material, photos and videos won’t be enough. People will want more immediacy, direct access — something vaguely akin to a Being John Malkovich experience.

In a 5.16 N.Y. Times story about Google Glass by David Streitfeld, attorney Karen L. Stevenson says that “we are all now going to be both the paparazzi and the paparazzi’s target.”