Daily

I’ve been planning to have a re-designed Hollywood Elsewhere up and running by early May. But the roughs from HE’s deisgner were slow in coming so yesterday afternoon I said “the hell with it” and went down to my local Kinkos with scissors and scotch tape and pasted together my own design. It’s different, it’s roughly balanced and is more or less what the new HE will be. Many refinements will happen between now and May 1st (I’m obviously sharing the re-design in hopes of attracting comments and suggestions) but I like that the classic HE skyscraper now has protruding features and boxes — I like the architectural feeling of flirting with but not succumbing to structural imbalance.

BUZZHOUND (not a firm name — still playing around with options) will be one of those up-and-down charts that track who or what is rising or falling in terms of critical huzzahs, box-office, general perception, etc. An instant-read device that will appeal to those who find reading more than three paragraphs in succession to be a challenge. I was also thinking of calling it DECEPTIONIST but this sounds like something Perez Hilton would write. I was also considering SCANNERS but that hasn’t resonated with people I’ve asked so far. A trusted colleague says that BUZZHOUND sounds a little crude and common, but others are down with it. You can’t say it doesn’t sound simple, direct and unambiguous.

The FLASHBOX will be one of those left-to-right tickers that highlight the latest HE items and stories — nothing original. (I ran a moving ticker bar five or six years ago.) I like that the lead story will be in the FLUSH UPPER LEFT position and the TWITTER BOX (all my current tweets plus responses & eff yous and whatnot) will overlap the right edge of the column. I think this opens things up and makes the column seem a little cooler on some level.

The ALL-WHITE VERTICAL LOWER-LEFT PANEL that kisses the 160 x 600 ads would consist of either (a) a series of postage-stamp photos that would expand into monster-size JPEGs if you click on them, or (b) a vertical URL link panel, but someone was recently saying that offering links to other sites is an old idea that should be tossed.

I love that the site will now offer two 728 x 90 ad spaces instead of one, and that they’ll be separated by copy. A couple of 160 x 600 ad spaces will be lost but the extra 728 x 90 will more than make up.

The most important thing will be to format the new HE so that it looks nice and simple on the iPhone. The design as I’ve indicated will probably be okay on the iPad but I’ll defer to people who know this stuff better than I.

Is this really happening? N.Y. Post critic/columnist Lou Lumenick is now reporting that Warner Home Video’s forthcoming Shane Bluray (due on 6.4) “will now be presented in the 1:37 aspect ratio instead of the originally announced 1:66 ratio.” Lumenick says he was told this information “by a rep for Warner Home Video, which is handling release of many catalogue titles owned by Paramount Pictures.” No popping the champagne until an official announcement is issued by either Warner Home Video or Paramount Home Video, but this sounds amazing. I’m having an out-of-body experience.

Earlier today Lumenick tweeted that a DCP of the much-reviled 1.66 version of George Stevens‘ 1953 classic would not be shown at TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood next week, and that the correct 1:37 version would screen instead.

So nobody will even see the 1.66 version now? I for one am at least curious to see what all the rumpus was about. It would be interesting to see what will now go down in history as a huge miscalculation on the part of Paramount Home Video. On top of which George Stevens, Jr. assured me in an email received last month that he’d taken pains to make sure that the 1.66:1 compositions would be much more inclusive and balanced than the 1.66 images projected at the Radio City Music Hall when Shane opened in April of 1953. Perhaps the 1.66 version will show up on cable or Netflix/Amazon/Hulu down the road.

Needless to add this is a huge “bitches bow” moment for Hollywood Elsewhere. Lumenick has been an occasional antagonist of me and this column in the past, but he was classy enough to offer congratulations — thanks, Lou.

I’m naturally presuming that this “leaked” 2013 Cannes competition roster is bogus until I hear otherwise from at least two people in a position to know. But if it’s genuine — I say “if” — everyone will be over the moon about seeing Alexander Payne‘s black-and-white Nebraska, which you have to automatically assume will be a Best Picture contender because…you know, the Payne brand. This is just what Cannes needed. But let’s not jump the gun. The official announcement is 12 or 13 hours away.

io9‘s Meredith Woerner reports the following from Cinemacon about some teaser footage from Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity: “It was quick and dirty, but completely terrifying. The only bit of information we’ve ever had on this flick is this one-line synopsis: ‘Astronauts attempt to return to earth after debris crashes into their space shuttle, leaving them drifting alone in space.’ What was shown was this moment, and only this moment.

“George Clooney and Sandra Bullock hovering outside of some sort of spacecraft in modern-day space suits. Clooney’s voice crackles over a radio, ‘It’s gorgeous, isn’t it? The sunrise?’ The earth is simply twinkling in gorgeous light. They nod toward each other, a moment of silence while orbiting their home planet. And then they’re hit. You can’t tell what but they’re showered with some sort of space debris. Could be a meteor shower. The space station is shattered. One floating astronaut helplessly drags his or her fingers across the side of the station. The other grapples with some sort of tubing. ‘Don’t let go!’ Bullock cries. But it’s too late. She’s floating away, ever so slowly. You can hear her breathing pick up as she floats farther and farther away from the damaged craft. We’re not 100% sure if Clooney manages to stay near the wreck, but Bullock is 100% gone.

“All in all,” Woerner concludes, “the footage felt like [it lasted] one minute — but it was intense enough to leave a massive impression. Let’s hope Cuaron keeps the real “terror in space” vibe alive through the end.” One presumes that the footage was in 3D, although Weorner doesn’t mention this/

This will not be taken as surprising by anyone in the know, but a European distribution guy told me the following this morning: “Not that it matters much only one day before the official announcement, but I’ve got confirmation from [a 100% reliable source] that Inside Llewyn Davis, the new Coen brothers film, and Only God Forgives, the allegedly ultra-violent Nicholas Winding Refn-Ryan Gosling filme, will indeed play in competition in Cannes. Inside Llewyn Davis will apparently screen on the first weekend, and Only God Forgives on the second Wednesday.

After confirming earlier that a restored Shane would be screened at the TCM Classic Festival in the reviled 1.66 format, N.Y. Post critic/columnist Lou Lumenick tweeted this morning that “TCMfilmfest will now show Shane in 1:37 instead of 1:66 ‘because Paramount is making both available.'” That’s code, trust me, for “the powers-that-be have thrown in the towel.” If Shane Bluray distributor Warner Home Video was in a balls-out, damn-the-defiant mode for the 1.66 version, they would have insisted that it be screened in that format at the TCM festival.

The 1.66 Shane Bluray will still come out in early June, of course, but I’m told that a 1.37 alternative version will be made available later this year, probably via Warner Archives.

Needless to add plans to picket the 4.27 Shane screening at the TCM Classic Film Festival have been called off. And I went all the way downtown yesterday to get my public demonstration permit, or at least to start the process. At least I didn’t buy the poster-picket materials — posterboard, wooden pickets, magic markers, heavy staples.

All hail Team 1.37! Sincere thanks to Woody Allen, Joseph McBride, Bob Furmanek and all the commenters who stood up and said the right thing. And shame on those Home Theatre Forum commenters who kept insisting that 1.66 was a proper way to go because Paramount marketing execs insisted on cropping the original film in order to deliver a faux-panoramic screen experience in first-run theatres back in the spring of 1953.

A black-tie Shane 1.37 “boxy is beautiful” victory dinner for late April (just before or just after the 4.27 Shane screening at TCMfest) is being planned as we speak. I was going to to book a suite at the Beverly Hills hotel for the occasion, but now I’m thinking a rear table at Mel’s on the Strip is a better idea.

Haven’t even watched this yet. About to. Just got home from a screening of Jeff Nichols‘ Mud (Lionsgate/Roadside, 4.26). One of the year’s best in my book. Steady, solid and delivered just right. A coming-of-age story without a drop of treacly sentiment and no pandering to the saps. One of the finest Southern-flavored dramas about small-town rural values that I’ve ever seen, right up there with Sling Blade, Tender Mercies, The Straight Story, The Trip to Bountiful.

Wow…this keeps hitting me in waves. I guess I’ve been in denial on some level. This is really, really going to a boilerplate Superman origin story. Same old story, more or less. Dying Krypton, Jor-El, “goodbye, my son,” Smallville, Pa Kent, General Zod, “sent here for a reason”…all of it. Maybe with better dialogue, perhaps with better acting. But the same drill. Okay, minus Lex Luthor, Otis and Miss Tessmacher. Small favors.

If you’re making any kind of realistic ’70s movie your wardrobe and hair choices are going to horrify or sicken a good portion of your audience, even those who lived through that sartorially-disastrous decade. This certainly seems to be the case with David O. Russell‘s American Hustle, a title which alludes to honest entrepeneurship as much as cons and flim-flams. The film formerly known as “Russell’s ABSCAM flick” (and before that American Bullshit) finally got a firm title yesterday.

American Hustle montage stolen from Indiewire.

When I said “realistic ’70s movie” I meant one that excludes X-factor people. Nobody wants to admit this and I’m sure I’ll be called an elitist for saying so, but only semi-clueless bridge-and-tunnel people from lower-middle-class “meathead” neighborhoods (i.e., those who weren’t connected to dynamic big-city culture) wore laughably grotesque ’70s threads.

I was bopping around on the fringes in the mid to late ’70s and I never wore a fucking leisure suit or elephant collars or gaudy sunglasses or had godawful “big-hair.” Okay, I wore flared jeans but I was mainly into T-shirts and Frye boots and Brian DePalma-styled khaki bush-safari jackets and that whole American Gigolo/Giorgi Armani/Milan-influenced thing (i.e., nifty sport jackets, Italian loafers, shirts with small pointed collars).

HE to Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu: Congrats on yesterday’s start of principal photography on Birdman, your Michael Keaton-Edward Norton dramedy about a somewhat faded Hollywood actor from the CG-bullshit-blockbuster realm trying to revive his career by starring in a Broadway play based on a Raymond Carver story. Nobody likes to put pressure on themselves but the Fox Searchlight release suggests that your film could be released at the end of 2013. If you decide to make the effort and add gray hairs.

A rep for Fox Searchlight, Birdman‘s distributor, says “we’re targeting 2014” so that’s that, I guess. Then again David O. Russell‘s ABSCAM film is only a month ahead of you and that will definitely be released by mid December, Sony has announced. I realize it wouldn’t be easy but you could do it.

A ten-week shoot means you’ll be wrapped on July 1st or by July 15th if you go twelve weeks. If you firmly commit to five months in post-production you could have Birdman ready for release by mid-December. Especially if you shoot for ten weeks. Definitely possible and not all that crazy. If the editing goes well and the Movie Godz are favoring.

Shooting for Cannes 2014 is the simpler and more sensible thing — I get that. And you’ve never done a “comedy” so this is new turf. I’ll assume 2014 unless I hear otherwise…howzat?

In addition to Keaton and Norton Birdman costars Lindsay Duncan, Zach Galifianakis, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan, Emma Stone and Naomi Watts. The film will be a New Regency production with Inarritu and John Lesher serving as producers. Pic will be produced by New Regency. Fox Searchlight Pictures will market and distribute.

A Bluray of Andrew V. NcLaglen‘s McLintock (’63) came out three weeks ago. It’s not an especially admirable John Wayne film — a rowdy, overly broad western farce and nowhere near as entertaining in that regard as North to Alaska (’60). Boiled down it has one really good scene (i.e., “the hell I won’t”). And it’s noteworthy for using an exclamation point in the title.

Two questions: What other semi-respectable films have used exclamation points or question marks in their titles? (All I can think of are Them! and Quo Vadis?) And what films are known for being mostly a wash except for one really good or at least half-decent scene?