The better films will sometimes wait until the last few minutes to allow a flawed character to redeem himself in some way. The unusual (and I think great) thing about this scene is that Anthony Quinn‘s redemption comes too late to matter, and all that’s left is devastation. I’ve said this kind of thing 100 times, but you couldn’t end a film today with the lead character finally realizing that he’s been a thundering asshole and has totally screwed himself. The last film to try this was Woody Allen‘s Sweet and Lowdown.

One of the best riffs ever written by Awards Daily‘s Ryan Adams: “One reason [Oscar co-host James] Franco fell flat is because he was already in postmortem mode, doing an instantaneous mental autopsy of his onstage oblivion, already seeing his tiresome lines shrivel and wither on the vine…before bothering to prop them up with any game-face grinning facade.”

“No matter how many flashy autotune gimmicks the producers concoct to drag the Oscars into the 21st Century, it’s all just slapstick lipstick on a 3D pig without re-tuning the writing to bring it up to date. No matter how ‘fresh’ the presenters’ physical appeal, until the Oscars wise up and realize their writing staff is stale, the hosts can’t help but stink up the joint.”

Question: Why do certain guys transfer TV shows to YouTube without delivering decent sound?

Nine years after opening in theatres, John Lee Hancock‘s The Rookie arrives on Bluray on 3.29. You can count the number of G-rated, family-friendly films that are as good as this on one hand. “Remember the Titans was entertainment, using every trick and ploy to stir the emotions, ” I said in my original review. “The Rookie works its magic without seeming to milk, shovel, or pull anyone’s chain.”

It’s obviously tragic when a good and gifted man takes his life, especially when alcohol has played a part. This is what happened with poor Phil Ochs, the folk-and-protest troubadour who composed and performed famously in the ’60s but gradually lost the thread and then his reason for living. He hung himself in 1976, at age 35. Partly because of bipolar affliction and depression and booze, but also because he couldn’t find his way out of disappointment with how ’60s activism evolved, and because he failed to find a new musical groove that worked for his audience.

I’ve always respected Ochs — he cared deeply and his music had its rhyme and place — but I’ve never felt much ardor. I’ve always thought of him as a one-trick pony who ran out of luck and favor. He was fine at what he did when the winds of history and culture filled his sails, but he wasn’t much of a stayer.

In his heyday Ochs would literally flip through the N.Y. Times or the Village Voice and write a song about something that had riled him up. This fit the times when peacenik social protest and activism ran like a river through everything. But eventually street radicals took the stage, Nixonian repression kicked in, the “We” spirit waned and Ochs couldn’t adapt to the “Me.”

Ochs’ Wiki page quotes one of his biographers: “By Phil’s thinking, he had died politically in Chicago in 1968 in the violence of the Democratic National Convention; he had died professionally in Africa a few years later, when he had been strangled and felt that he could no longer sing; [and] he had died spiritually when Chile had been overthrown [in 1973].” In his 1969, at the age of 29, Ochs released an album (his sixth) called “Rehearsals for Retirement.” What kind of 29 year-old even flirts with such a notion?

Ochs tried to do more than just sing about social issues, true, but somewhere along the way the Gods stopped assisting.

Kenneth Bowser‘s There But For Fortune, which opened yesterday in LA, the Valley and Pasadena, tries to change the impression I mentioned earlier, or at least make Ochs’ story seem more layered and textured.

It covers Ochs’ activist-singer period in the manner of several other ’60s docs, which is to say rotely. Too many other films (including Martin Scorsese‘s masterful Bob Dylan: No Direction Home) have delivered similar material. Anyone presenting yet another doc about ’60s culture in 2011 needs to figure some way of doing it differently. I only know that when Bowser’s doc began, I said to myself, “Here we go again.”

Bowser’s doc gathers force when it charts Ochs’ decline, but you’re still left with a residue of a guy whose life became stuck in first gear.

Bowser mentioned some mitigating factors when we spoke a couple of days ago. From the late ’60s through the early ’70s, Ochs was “riding a wave of manic depression,” he said. “Going in manic and coming out depressed.”

It wasn’t just Ochs’ bipolarism or alcoholism or defeatism that led to his suicide, Bowser said, but also the fact that his audience that “wasn’t willing to accept him outside of the political protest realm.” This despite some interesting musical excursions (performing a Carnegie Hall concert in a glammy gold suit in 1970, getting into African music “ten years before Paul Simon“) and two noteworthy non-protesty albums (“Pleasures of the Harbor” and “Gunfight at Carnegie Hall“).

For me, one of the most telling moments in Bowser’s film comes when Gaslight Cafe manager Sam Hood calls Bob Dylan, whom Ochs deeply admired, a “prick.” The implication is that Ochs, for all his failings and weaknesses, was a nicer guy. Maybe so. But survival and winning and genius aren’t necessarily married to “nice.” I immediately thought that Ochs might have made it through the ’70s and into a longer or happier life if he had a little more Dylan in him, and I don’t just mean his vision or talent.

I didn’t disagree with Arianna Huffington‘s recent remark about unpaid Huffington Post contributors threatening to strike, which was basically “go ahead…no one will notice.” At the same time I couldn’t help chuckling at the similarity in tone between this and a line spoken by Oscar Werner in Martin Ritt‘s The Spy Who Came In From The Cold:

If I was Aaron Sorkin I would want my John Edwards movie, an adaptation of Andrew Young‘s “The Politician“, to appear before Jay Roach and Danny Strong‘s Game Change. Sorkin’s intention to write and direct for theatrical was announced last July. The latter is a forthcoming HBO adaptation of Mark Halperin and John Heilemann‘s best-seller that reports in depth about Edwards’ presidential campaign and concurrent affair with Reille Hunter.

Sorkin’s Oscar-winning, West Wing-fortified brand is such that his film could follow Roach’s and everything would be more or less okay. It ain’t the timing as much as the quality, etc. (Penny Marshall‘s Big was the final age-changing comedy released in the late 1980s, but it was the best.) Plus Sorkin’s film will focus mostly on Edwards, Young and Hunter while Strong’s screenplay will tell the stories of all the major players in the 2008 election.

But there’s no question that (a) being the second guy to tell the same story a few months after another version is never a desirable thing, (b) Joe Popcorn’s interest in a film about Edwards will probably be at least somewhat diminished if Roach’s HBO version comes out first (which appears likely), and (c) Roach and Strong’s Recount, the HBO film about the disputed Florida election that aired in ’08, was a highly absorbing, very well-written piece, so Sorkin’s Edwards movie kicking their Game Change ass in the telling of Edwards story isn’t exactly a done deal.

Sorkin’s will naturally be more detailed and probing (and almost certainly more devastating from Edwards’ personal perspective), but if Strong tells it well and Roach casts the right actors as Edwards and Hunter, the HBO version could make a lasting impression. I haven’t made any calls, but logic dictates that both films would want to come out during during the 2012 election cycle. My guess is that Roach and Strong’s HBO film will be out in early ’12 with Sorkin’s film (presuming it happens) hitting theatres sometime between the summer conventions and November 2012.

Hollywood Elsewhere is asking the usual sources to please send along PDFs of Strong’s script, which I’m told has gone out to actors, as well as a draft of Sorkin’s, if and when anyone has seen a copy. Thanks.

All the elements look immaculate in a quasi-Malicky sort of way. Every shot, line, garment and prop has been carefully selected, and shot just so. Nothing slapdash. But a voice is telling me to be a little bit suspicious of films with trailers that try to underscore things with delicate piano music and choirs. It opens on 4.22.

Update: Nothing gives me more pain and regret that posting a sentence that is grammatically incorrect. I’m not going to repeat the error that was up yesterday (i.e., Friday), but I do apologize.

Mark Harris‘s New York 3.3 piece about the over-exposure and self-immolation of Charlie Sheen is on-target and nicely written, etc., but Darrow‘s illustration kinda says it better. Sorry.

To go by the trailer and a clip, Barry W. Blaustein‘s Peep World (IFC Films, 3.25) might be moderately decent or perhaps even good. A cool, high-pedigree cast (Michael C. Hall, Rainn Wilson, Sarah Silverman, Stephen Tobolowsky, Taraji P. Henson, Judy Greer, Alicia Witt, Lesley Ann Warren, Ron Rifkin), snappy dialogue, dysfunctional family, etc. But the narration style is awful. And the word on the film isn’t so hot.

Michael Rechtshaffen‘s Toronto Film Festival review said it “very much wants to be The Royal Tenenbaums when it grows up.” And also The Celebration, the 1998 Danish Dogme film. “Unfortunately, the ripe setup quickly devolves into sophomoric shtick…[and this] leaves the talented cast high and dry,” he says. “Only Silverman manages to find lasting comic inspiration with Peep World‘s least obnoxious character, relatively speaking.”

That said, a phone-call scene between Hall and Wilson contained on the apple.com page isn’t half bad.

I’m firing the Sony S380 Bluray player I bought it last weekend. It’s finished. I’m taking it back to Best Buy on Sawtelle this afternoon, and I’d love to punch it a couple of times and then throw it against the wall for dramatic effect, and then kick it and spit on it. I hate brand-new machines that fuck with you because their designers are assholes.

There’s nothing wrong with the picture quality at all, but the bugger gave me all kinds of trouble with aspect-ratio control. I had to struggle and call around and ask questions just to figure out how to make 1.33 to 1 aspect ratio films (i.e., those released from the mid ’50s and back) look like they should without getting that irritating horizontal taffy-pull effect. Plus the Bluray remote doesn’t have an instant return to the DVD home screen command button. You have to click up and then sideways and find the right control….the hell with that. Plus the remote command action is sluggish; the TV needs a second or two to think before responding.

I got the 1.33 to 1 thing working well for a time (I was quite pleased, in fact, that the S380 delivers almost a perfect box effect by displaying the full height of those old films) but then it reverted to problem status. I’ve been told by a home-video specialist who dropped by to get a wifi-friendly Samsung 8500. I’ve never liked the name Samsung (i.e., too Korean) but I’m done with Sony Bluray players for life. I’d honestly like to put the S380 in the middle of Westbourne Drive and run over it with my car.

HE regulars know that I make many mistakes at many film festivals. And one of my errors at last September’s Toronto gathering was missing James Gunn‘s Super (IFC Films, 4.1). Not because I heard it was stupendous, but because a film that “looks and feels like a weird mixture of a feature length SNL digital short, Kick-Ass and a Troma Film,” as Slashfilm‘s Peter Sciretta described it six months ago, is probably better than Kick-Ass. And that would be welcome.

I missed a Manhattan screening of Super earlier this week, and I haven’t quite persuaded the 42West person who’s screening it in Los Angeles to advise about whatever’s coming up.

Everyone knows it’s basically about a loser schlub (Rainn Wilson) deciding to wear the suit and and the attitude of a super hero after losing his wife (Liv Tyler) to a drug dealer (Kevin Bacon), and eventually teaming with an irksome comic-book clerk (Ellen Page) who helps guide him into the superhero realm and later becomes his Chloe Moretz-y sidekick.

“There are moments of brilliance,” Sciretta wrote, “surrounded by moments of bad sketch comedy. Page is the highlight…hilarious as the psychotic sidekick who’s looking to fight crime (even where/when it might not exist). Super also has some good character-based emotional moments [perhaps better suited to] a Jason Reitman film,” and which “feel a bit out of place and unearned in this movie.”

Criterion’s ten-year-old Rififi DVD is one of my all-time black-and-white faves. It was like seeing this 1954 classic for the first and only time…what clarity! I saw it projected at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art a few years ago when Jules Dassin dropped by for a visit, and their print wasn’t nearly as rich and detailed and super-silvery as the DVD.

So I’m thinking of buying the recently released, region-free Gaumont Bluray version when I’m in France for the Cannes Film Festival. yeah, even without English subtitles. Because the same black-and-white high will kick in, only more so. And that’s all I care about.

Amazon says this Bluray version which a 1.33 to 1 aspect ratio. The DVD Beaver screen grabs suggest this as well. If it’s in fact presented this way I can imagine how some who frequent this site might be offended. How dare they not issue it Psycho-style by cropping the tops and bottoms and whacking off a good 25% of the originally intended image? The TVs that we use today have 16 x 9 screens and that’s all that matters, right? Crop those boxy images!