Around the 57-minute mark of Stanley Kubrick‘s Spartacus, there’s a magnificent matte painting shot of Rome. What makes it special isn’t just the painting of the ancient city by Peter Ellenshaw, but the filmed inserts of gesturing extras dressed in Roman garb.

According to IndexFX, “All but one of the Spartacus matte paintings were done at Universal’s matte painting department under the supervision of Russell Lawson.

“But for the establishing shot showing a view of Rome, Kubrick requested that the painting be done by Ellenshaw, who at that time was the head of matte painting at Disney Studios.”

Here’s an Academy Museum site focused oh the Ellenshaw painting.

Question: What are some other old-school matte paintings blended with live action…ones that really stand out, I mean?

Among many others I recently participated in Scott Feinberg’s “The 100 Greatest Film Books of All Time” survey, the results of which popped in The Hollywood Reporter today (10.12).

What’s the next great topic for a Hollywood expose or tell-all? Six years ago I suggested a book called “Super-Vomit: How Hollywood Infantiles (i.e., Devotees of Comic Books and Video Games) Degraded Theatrical and All But Ruined The Greatest Modern Art Form“?

Here’s another idea — a recent-history book one about how censorious, ultra-sensitive wokesters all but suffocated the film business during the woke terror era (2016 to present)?

Here are the books I put on my top-25 Feinberg list:

(1) Sam Wasson’s “The Big Goodbye” (making of Chinatown book)

(2) Stephen Bach‘s “Final Cut: Dreams and Disasters in the Making of Heaven’s Gate”

(4) Mark Harris‘s “Pictures at a Revolution”

(5) John Gregory Dunne‘s “The Studio”

(6) Leo Braudy‘s “The World in a Frame”

(7) Thomas Schatz‘s “The Genius of the System”

(8) David McClintick‘s “Indecent Exposure”

(9) Otto Freidrich‘s “City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s“,

(10) Julie Salamon‘s “The Devil’s Candy,”

(11) Jack Brodsky and Nathan Weiss‘s “The Cleopatra Papers”

(12) David Thomson‘s “Suspects“ + “The Whole Equation

(13) William Goldman‘s “Which Lie Did I Tell?”

(14) Peter Biskind‘s “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” and “Down and Dirty Pictures.”

(15) Charles Fleming‘s “High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess,”

(16) William Goldman‘s “Adventures in the Screen Trade”,

(17) the audio version of Robert Evans‘ “The Kid Stays in the Picture”,

(18) James B. Stewart‘s “Disney War“

(19) Peter Biskind‘s “Seeing is Believing”

(20) Thomas Doherty‘s “Hollywood’s Censor” (the book about Joe Breen)

(21) Jake Ebert and Terry Illiot‘s “My Indecision Is Final”

(22) Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters‘ “Hit and Run: How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood“,

(23) Bruce Wagner‘s “Force Majeure“,

(24) David Thomson‘s “Warren Beatty and Desert Eyes: A Life and a Story“

(25) Nathaniel West‘s “The Day of the Locust”

Posted from Telluride ’23: “Aki Kaurismäki‘s Fallen Leaves, a Chaplinesque, slightly glum relationship comedy-drama. Costars Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen deliver quietly touching performances. Several weeks ago a somewhat dismissive Cannes review of Kaurismaki‘s film lowered my want-to-see. But at the urging of SBIFF kingpin Roger Durling I caught it yesterday afternoon, and was glad that I did. It’s a simple but pleasing romantic fable — bare bones, wholly believable, well acted and genuinely touching.”

The most devastating part of the second video (i.e, Irish father shares the details of his daughter’s death) are those reaction shots of Clarissa Ward. She’s frozen her expression in order to keep it all in.

We’re all feeling the horror and revulsion from the murders of Israeli adults and children in Israel and Gaza, but I’m imagining it’s hitting parents of young children harder. It’s hitting me very hard.

Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday evening: “We will wipe out this thing called Hamas. Hamas — the Islamic State of Gaza — will be wiped from the face of the earth. It will not continue to exist. There will be no situation in which Israeli children are murdered and we all go about our business.”

Friendo: “I’m confused.”

HE: “I’m catching it this evening at 6 pm. If Paul Schrader can find it in his heart, maybe I can too.”

Friendo: “Why on earth would you bother?”

HE: “It’s a cultural event. Like Barbie. I can’t ignore it. I can’t live in a cocoon. I have to open myself up to it.”

Friendo: “Do U like Taylor Swift? Ur gonna be crazy bored watching a concert movie in a theater.”

Roughly ten days ago I presented a case for Barbie and Poor Things being more or less the same film, the difference being that Poor Things is sexier, crazier, loopier, trippier…more Alice in Wonderland meets Terry Gilliam‘s Frankenstein in a hard-R kinda way.

Poor Things, in short, is a much hipper film…more apple-cart-upsetting, more subterranean, more wild-ass unhinged…almost in a Radley Metzger sense.

And yet if the Best Picture race comes down to these two being the finalists, the proverbial mob (i.e., those who are far less hip than they think they are) wants the Oscar to go to Barbie. Why? Because it became a huge cultural event and made tons and tons of money, and they loved that glorious affirmation of urban girlitude and pinkitude. It was quite the national moment.

Filed on 7.20.23 — one of the first things I wrote after my late afternoon show of Barbie ended:

Key 7.20.23 passage: “I have to give Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach credit for having created a fleet, zippy, self-acknowledging, hall-of-mirrors Barbie universe that mostly works.

“If you don’t mind the relentless humiliation that is heaped upon the stupid, self-deluding Ken men, the film holds together. It’s fully realized and precisely thought through and is quite the pink creation, quite the work of imagination…

“Even though it regards men as pathetic and immature and basically seven- and eight-year-olds…the Barbie women are the wise and the strong and way, WAY more commanding and visionary and competent….the Ken men are foolish, emotionally stunted infants, and women know SO much more and are SO much wiser and more mature and they, henceforth, will lead the way. And are destined, it is fully implied, to run the real world once the men are fully deballed and schooled and feminized…”

“No Clint Eastwood or Lee Marvin types allowed! And no Cary Grants or Jack Lemmons either! Only buff-bod gay guys who are pretending to be straight, or at least aren’t identified as queer.”

But honestly? The more I think about Barbie, the less interested I am in seeing it again. If it has to be one of these, I’m definitely more in the Poor Things camp.

Lawmen: Bass Reeves is a new western series (Paramount +, 11.5) about a tough, well-respected lawman in the Arkansas and Oklahoma Indian territories during the post-Civil War Years.

The series was created by showrunner Chad Feehan, executive produced by Taylor Sheridan, and stars David Oyelowo (who also produced). Costarring Dennis Quaid, Forrest Goodluck, Lauren E. Banks, Barry Pepper, Grantham Coleman, Demi Singleton.

I don’t know how many episodes are in store but the writers won’t need to invent much as Reeves lived quite a life. The trailer makes it feel Deadwood-y.

What I haven’t figured is why the first word in the title is Lawmen.

Wiki excerpt: “Reeves worked for 32 years as a federal peace officer in the Indian Territory, brought in some of the most dangerous fugitives of the time, and was never wounded despite having his hat and belt shot off on separate occasions.

“In addition to being a marksman with a rifle and revolver, Reeves developed superior detective skills during his long career. When he retired in 1907, Reeves had on his record thousands of arrests of felons, some accounts claiming over 3000. According to his obituary, he killed 14 outlaws to defend his life.”

Reeves was portrayed by Delroy Lindo in The Harder They Fall (’21).