I’m going to read William Faulkner‘s As I Lay Dying on my 5.3 NYC-to-Berlin flight as preparation for James Franco‘s filmed adaptation, which will play in the Un Certain Regard section. The story is about an ailing family matriarch, Addie Bundren (Beth Grant), on her way out and efforts by her sons and others to honor her request to be buried in the nearby town of Jefferson, Mississippi. Franco has cast Danny McBride in a supporting role, which strikes me as curious given that McBride is renowned for playing brute, snorting, slovenly beasts in comedies. Jim Parrack (True Blood) plays Cash, Addie’s oldest son, and Franco plays Darl, the second oldest. Logan Marshall-Green, Ahna O’Reilly and Tim Blake Nelson also costar.

Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg has posted five suggestions for the Academy to consider when they have their “unprecedented, all-members meeting” on Saturday, May 4th. The one I agree with the most is about reducing deadwood and expanding the membership:

“(3) Address the demographics of the membership. The Academy should address widespread and not unmerited concern about the diversity of its membership, or lack thereof: a recent LA Times study revealed it is 94% white, 77% male and 86% over the age of 50). This has a lot to do with why more conservative films triumph over more daring films (Crash d. Brokeback Mountain, The King’s Speech d. The Social Network, etc.), some films of questionable merit get nominated at all (schmaltz like The Blind Side and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close), and some eminently worthy films do not (The Dark Knight, Blue Valentine, etc.).

“There are only two realistic ways for the Academy to fix this anytime soon. It could purge from its rolls members who have long been inactive or retired, the strategy employed by former Academy president Gregory Peck in the 1960s. Or, to avoid hurting those members’ feelings but still dilute their influence, while also endearing itself to younger and active people in the industry, the Academy could markedly expand its membership, which now numbers around 6,000. This would not be unprecedented. Membership swelled to around 12,000 from 1938 to 1945 when the members of the Screen Extras Guild were invited to join and had full voting privileges.”

In a 4.4.13 HE piece called “Reduce Deadwood Influence,” I suggested a scaled voting system that would give more weight to votes from Academy members who’ve contributed to a film within the last five years than to those who’ve more or less been out of the game a decade or two or longer.

“If the Academy wants to be part of the world as it is right now and have the Oscar winners reflect this, it has to reduce the influence of people whose professional peaks happened 15 or 20 or 25 or more years ago. These people will retain membership and all the priveleges that go with that, but their votes won’t count as much as those who are actively working and contributing to the films of today. Simple.

“Every year Academy members will be asked online ‘how recently have you worked on a feature film destined for theatrical or a film or series destined for cable or streaming?’ If the last film you worked on was released ten or more years ago, you get a single vote and become a C-grade voter. If the last film you have worked on was released between five and ten years ago, you get two votes and become a B-grade voter. And if you’ve worked on a film made and released within the last five years, you get three votes and becomes an A-grade voter.

“How would this system be unfair? What could possibly be the downside? If this system had been in place seven years ago, Brokeback Mountain would have won the Best Picture Oscar.”

Sometime during the Cannes Film Festival (5.15 through 5.26) I’m going to wheedle my way into a market screening of Randall Miller‘s CBGB. Exchange CEO Brian O’Shea announced today he’s acquired int’l rights to this saga of the famed Lower East Side punk-rock club and of founder Hilly Kristal (Alan Rickman). You know Rickman will be tasty but the film will have to get it right in terms of that rank and tattered Bowery & Bleecker atmosphere, particularly as manifested from the mid ’70s to early ’80s.

Two things worry me…no, three. One, there was a male supporting player in Miller’s Bottleshock, which began in the late ’60s or early ’70s, who wore an atrocious hippie-hair wig. That told me that Miller isn’t all that good at recreating ’60s and ’70s period flavor. Two, the girl in the pink poster doesn’t look like a denizen of the Lower East Side in the ’70s — she looks like a poseur from Mamaroneck or Cranford hanging out at a mall in 1988. And three, the above poster is nothing short of atrocious. A movie that really values what CBGB was about wouldn’t mention “one disgusting toilet” in the copy line. (I remember that toilet and it was fairly gross, but that wasn’t the point.)

There were two kinds of people who caught shows at CBGB. The first kind looked at the “CBGB and OMFUG” sign and said, “Yeah, sure…stands for Country Bluegrass Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers.” Which is what Kristal had in mind when he created the acronym. The second kind just went with the sound of CBGB and presumed that OMFUG was a uniquely New York mantra that combined the meditative “ohhhhm” with FUG, which naturally associates with The Fugs (Tuli Kupferberg, Ed Sanders, “I couldn’t get high, oh no no!”).

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.