Pro Video Coalition‘s Eric Escobar has posted a summary of yesterday’s “state of cinema” speech by Steven Soderbergh, delivered at the Kabuki Cinemas under the aegis of the San Francisco Int’l Film Festival. Reporting has apparently been scant due to Soderbergh having requested that no one record video or audio or even take pictures…Jesus.

At one point Soderbergh delivered the following observation, according to Escobar: “Executives Don’t Get Punished But Filmmakers Do: When a film bombs, it’s the fault of the filmmakers. There is no turnover in the executive offices, and the artists are just replaced with new artists and the machine learns nothing. There is no support of a filmmaker over his or her career. There is no talent development strategy so that a filmmaker grows by trying ideas, making mistakes and triumphs, learning from the experiences and becoming a better filmmaker. It is opening weekend numbers and end-product profits perspective.”

And this, said Soderbergh, is killing the occasional healthy push-through of arty or innovative or otherwise interesting cinema in the movie business.

No shit?

Escobar also reports that Soderbergh “concluded that if you’re a studio then the set-up is working fine. Then he pontificated that if he were given a half a billion dollars he’d gather up all the really good indie filmmakers he knew (including Amy Seimetz, Shane Carruth and Barry Jenkins) and set them loose within a timeframe and budget total and say go for it, make me three films, spend the money as you see fit. But no one has given him a half a billion dollars.”

Honestly — if you had a half a billion dollars to throw into movies and you were looking for at least some kind of modest return so you could keep re-investing and making more films, would you give it to Soderbergh so he could pass it along to Seimetz, Carruth and Jenkins? Soderbergh has made three things clear over the last 20 years: (a) he’s a brilliant filmmaker, (b) outside of the Ocean’s films and Out of Sight and Magic Mike he does’t make movies for the popcorn-munching masses and (c) he relates mostly to emotionally cool and reserved material — his films don’t exactly deliver great rivers of emotion.

Was anyone dumb enough to pay to see Big Wedding this weekend? I wouldn’t watch it with a knife at my back. Any film with a 10% or lower Rotten Tomatoes rating deserves special mention, but the stink was spreading on this one weeks ago. Is Robert DeNiro back to being the once-phenomenal-but-now-diminished actor who will take any paycheck role that comes along, or is he still coasting on that Silver Linings Playbook good will? The latter, right? Give him a pass. But if he keeps this shit up, it’s back to the doghouse.

So Reese Witherspoon‘s cowardly decision to bail on talk-show appearances earlier this week to promote Mud didn’t hurt the film’s commercial performance. Jeff Nichols‘ well-reviewed rural drama earned $2.1 million on 363 screens, which translates as a $6022 average. Surely a smattering of HE readers have seen it by now. Have critics been over-praising (98% Rotten Tomatoes) or are they on the money? Reactions, please.

Mouse is perfectly fine. Last Friday the Laurel Pet Hospital staff shaved him, removed the abcess, stitched him up, etc. Antibiotic administered. Four liquid painkillers swallowed. That’s a little drainage tube that’s coming out Monday or Tuesday. Right as rain.

This clip should be used for a re-edit of Charles Ferguson‘s Oscar-winning Inside Job (’10). Everyone in that film is so brilliant and urbane and measured in their analyses. This Irish guy just spits it out plain and true. Thanks to Moving Picture Blog‘s Joe Leydon for passing it along.

Leydon comments: “This was sent to me by a former shipmate of my late father, Michael Leydon. This guy sure as hell sounds like him. I visited [my dad] in Liverpool (where he spent his retirement years with my stepmom) during the infamous miners’ strike. Wish I had a dollar for every time he referred to Margaret Thatcher as ‘that fookin’ bitch.'”

Of course I’m posting this 12 hours later than everyone else did last night. What do you expect? This is Hollywood Elsewhere. I have to kick things around and let them settle down to the bedrock before I pass them along. Best line: “Really? Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?” Best staged bit: Daniel Day Lewis starring in Steven Spielberg‘s Obama.

I’ve just sent the following to George Stevens, Jr. regarding last night’s levitational Shane screening at the TCM Classic Film Festival: “George — I just want to extend a crisp, respectful salute and heartfelt congratulations for a magnificent digital restoration job on Shane, which I saw last night on the big screen at the Chinese in glorious 1.37. Chapin Cutler of Boston LIght & Sound (whom I spoke to in the booth yesterday afternoon) was overseeing the digital projection. It was drop-to-your-knees — the most beautiful rendering I’ve ever seen of this 1953 classic. It was like seeing it new and fresh all over again. It was almost like being there on the set. The detail was to die for.

Poster from Bob Furmanek’s 3D Film Archive site. Thanks to Bob got letting me use it.

“For the first time I noticed the reddish-violet markings on the pearl-white hand grip on Jack Palance‘s six-shooters. For the first time I noticed the pancake that was applied to try and cover Jean Arthur‘s crow’s feet. For the first time I noticed dozens if not hundreds of little details that hadn’t popped through on that DVD from 12 and 1/2 years ago.

“I have some perspective because in addition to seeing Shane countless times on TV and via that 2000 DVD, I saw what looked like an excellent, scratch-free 35mm print at a special Academy showing about ten years ago. (Or was it 15 years ago?) I remember that Palance was there and he delivered some pithy remarks to the crowd. Anyway, what I saw last night was a much sharper, cleaner and more vivid Shane than anything I’ve ever seen in my life. And with a wonderful Technicolored vibrancy (i.e., natural tones, not over saturated).

“For what it’s worth I was enormously impressed by the night scenes, which really look like night. There’s ‘fake’ day-for-night in which everything looks brighter than it should so that the audience can see things more clearly, and there’s authentic, genuine-looking day-for-night which I saw last night — a look of actual moonlight. You told me earlier you weren’t entirely satisfied by the night scenes but the integrity was obvious. The more commercial way to go, obviously, would have been to render them with more light, but you stuck to your guns. Hats off.

“I wasn’t just delighted by how good Shane looked last night — I was spellbound if not close to shocked. My eyes were going ‘wow,’ ‘wow’ and ‘double-wow.’ The Bluray is going to send the faithful into spasms of delight. I wish I could see it again on a really big screen. Sincere congratulations to you & your Technicolor colleagues.

“Side note: The reason it looked better than that 35 mm print I saw 10 or 15 years ago was because the grain has been slightly velvetized with a higher contrast effect. This was a 4K scan, of course, and the elements were presumably captured by the proprietary process known as Ultra High Resolution. Developed by Warner Brothers in collaboration with two sisters who created the process for AOL, UHR “digitally realigns and sharpens the color on classic movies shot with the three-strip Technicolor process.”

“I only know that the mint-condition Technicolor prints I’ve seen of numerous three-strip Technicolor films over the years have not looked as sharp and radiant as what I saw last night. I suspect that one or two pain-in-the-ass purist monks are going to write reviews that say “this looks too good!…this isn’t what the original Technicolor version looked like!…it’s been artificially sweetened!” I only know that in all my years on this planet, Shane has never looked so drop-dead beautiful. The classic content brought tears to my eyes all over again, and the look of it brought tears to my eyes as well so it was a heavy emotional experience.

“I’m going to write Joe McBride about this right away. And also Robert Harris and Woody Allen and the world in general. I’m only sorry I wasn’t able to see Giant earlier yesterday. — Respectfully, Jeffrey Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere”

12 or 13 years ago I had a glorious two-wheeled Steve McQueen adventure during the Cannes Film Festival. On a scooter, I mean. Which some would say automatically disqualifies it as a McQueen-type deal. This is how Elvis Mitchell (at the time the chief N.Y. Times critic) responded when I told him about it later that night. “No, no…you don’t get it,” I replied. “I’m not saying I did the Steve McQueen motorcycle thing by classic Great Escape standards. I was buzzing around winding curves and taking in the scenic grandeur and kinda feeling like McQueen…okay? Because I was playing Elmer Bernstein‘s score in my head. It was rapture.”

I rented a decent-sized scooter around 10 am that morning. (It was a Sunday.) I drove into the hills above St. Paul de Vence and headed east, tooling along serpentine roads in the high craggy hills above Cannes, Juan les Pins, Antibes and Nice. I went from village to village, stopping for photos or just to stop and stare. I had lunch in St. Paul and ordered a steaming lobster bisque with a submerged folded white tortilla filled with lobster meat. I visited a tiny little village that I forget the name of but which you can see for a few seconds in in To Catch A Thief. Then I made my way down to the coast west of Nice and headed back to Cannes, tooling along the beach roads, stopping now and then to check out the babes. I returned the bike around 5 or 6 pm.

I haven’t solo’ed like that since. You generally can’t do this kind of adventure with a lady. Some are cool enough to savor this kind of roam-around but most girls aren’t. Too security-minded. They’ll explore but only in a car.

I caught yesterday afternoon’s TCM Classic Film Festival screening of The Great Escape, and I’m sorry to say that it was a pleasant but no-great-shakes experience. John Sturges‘ classic World War II action drama has been remastered for a forthcoming Bluray (due May 7th) and I was assuming that the DCP version would make this 1963 film look and sound a little spiffier and brassier and more eye-filling than it did the last time I saw it in a theatre, which was sometime in the ’80s.

Steve McQueen between takes of Ther Great Escape.

Especially, you know, if the DCP guys scanned the original negative and were given the funding from MGM Home Video to do an extra nice job.

I’m kidding, of course. MGM Home Video is renowned as a bargain-basement outfit. They don’t want to spend a dime more than they have to. If MGM Home Video ran an airline you wouldn’t want to fly with them, trust me. The result is that they probably scanned an inter-positive rather than the original Great Escape negative with an order to do the best job they could within a tight budget. I don’t know any budgetary facts but what I saw on the big Chinese screen looked like a handsomely-shot film that had been mastered by the Mrs. Grace L. Ferguson Airline and Storm Door Company.

I’m presuming that the Bluray will look much better but that’s another story.

The Great Escape looked reasonably okay on that huge curved screen, but that’s all. Good color, at times smothered in Egyptian grainstorm, a little murky in certain scenes, not that sharply focused, kinda hazy looking. And the sound levels were way too soft. Elmer Bernstein‘s score is supposed to hit you across the chest and lift you up and make you want to march and get out your M1 carbine so you can shoot Germans. Yesterday I felt as if I was listening to his score with earmuffs on. (And I had seen the last half-hour of Bonnie and Clyde in the same theatre an hour earlier and the sound was clear and full and strong so don’t tell me.)

If you want to be generous you could say The Great Escape looked a tiny bit better than the 2004 DVD. But only here and there. It often looked as if the 2004 DVD was being projected on a white wall in the back room of a bar. The source material wasn’t that extraordinary to begin with, remember. Daniel Fapp‘s cinematography is clean and professional but strictly average by 1963 location-shoot standards. It wasn’t shot in 70mm or VistaVision or Todd-AO but plain old reliable 35mm. Again, as is often the case, the Bluray, a down-rez from the DCP, will probably be another story. Professional compression almost always delivers sharper results.

On top of which the movie itself is starting to seem a little too smug. Bonnie and Clyde hasn’t been diminished by the decades, not in the least, but The Great Escape is starting to feel a little too calculated and even a bit sentimental. For my money it indulges in far too much winking. It’s almost played on a Hogan’s Heroes level…too much jaunty humor. We’re a bunch of cool-attitude 30something actors and the Germans are mostly schmucks, and we can pretty much do anything we want within reason. (Including making our own potato vodka and throwing a 4th of July party.) It’s like high school, this prison. The German guards and officers behave like hugely irritated geometry and math teachers…”Who’s throwing spitballs? Apparently some people in this room want detention!”

/em>.

The currently unfolding TCM Classic Film Festival is having its big Shane screening this evening at 6:30 pm inside the TCL Chinese. I’ll be signing autographs in the front footprint-and-handprint court from 6 pm to 6:20 pm. I’m kidding, for God’s sake. Seriously, this is one of Hollywood Elsewhere’s proudest moments if I do say so myself. No one is more gratified that George Stevens’ 1953 classic is going to be screened at 1.37:1 and not the previously planned 1.66:1 version. (Ditto the forthcoming Bluray.) All’s well that ends well.

I’ll also be catching the 2 pm screening of a 35mm print of John Frankenheimer‘s The Train (and I don’t want to see it shown at 1.85, please, but 1.66, which is how it’s been masked on the DVD and the laser disc). I may also possibly attend the 9:15 screening of Mildred Pierce (which I’ve never seen) at the Egyptian.

It’s funny when someone like Sam Mendes talks about feeling nauseous at the prospect of directing this or that film. Everyone chuckles knowingly, heh-heh. But critics and columnists are called intemperate or loose cannons (as I have been) if they write about having experienced a similar visceral reaction to some kind of punishing theatrical experience.

A return of the “old” David Gordon Green before he went broad and comedic. The Sundance showings produced a 75% Rotten Tomatoes rating. Opening on 8.9.13.