A friend says “it might be nice for you to acknowledge the death this week of Robert Radnitz, in my opinion the last great consistent producer of quality-level, doesn’t-talk-down-to-kids family films — Sounder, Misty, A Dog Of Flanders, Cross Creek, Island Of The Blue Dolphins, Where The Lilies Bloom, etc. You’d never catch this guy making Marmaduke!” An L.A. Times writer once called Radnitz “the only successful American maker of children’s films outside the gates of Walt Disney films.”

A standard Disney-mulching of the story of Rapunzel, Nathan Greno and Byron Howard‘s Tangled (11.24.10) looks like the same old family crap, to go by the trailer. Same goofy-rompy vibe, same late ’80s-early ’90s Disney-Katzenberg attitude, same glib and rascally hero, same prom-queen heroine with perfect feet (and a pedicure to die for), same initial hostility between them followed by a gradual warming…zzzzzz.

I was hoping against hope that the Universal Home Video’s forthcoming Psycho Bluray (due on 10.19) might have an optional version with the original 1.37 to 1 framing, which would obviously offer more top-bottom information than today’s 16 x 9 plasma/LCD flatscreen image can afford. But no such luck.

Some people don’t like to hear this, but Alfred Hitchcock protected this 1960 classic so it could be shown in theatres and on TV with a 1.37 to 1 aspect ratio. On top of which many theatres back then were using 1.66 to 1 aperture plates so don’t tell me. The Psycho norm was never intended to be 1.78 to 1 (i.e., the widescreen aspect ratio for high-def video). For the most part Hitchcock expected his film to be shown within ratios of 1.66 to 1 (moderate rectangle) or 1.37 to 1 (next door to a perfect box).

What happened is that the high-def crowd came along about ten years ago and said, “Okay, we’re wiping the slate clean and starting off totally fresh, and as far as we’re concerned all non-CinemaScope films shot from the mid ‘to late ’50s to the present will henceforth be seen in a 1.78 to 1 aspect ratio. Take it or leave it. We realize we’ll be chopping off information that was intended to be seen, but screw it…we don’t care.”

Here are two postings from www.hitchcockwiki.com about this subject, the first from British Hitchcock fan James Whitehead:

“I dug out my ten-year-old VHS tape of a broadcast print of Psycho and ran it on a 4:3 telly alongside the Region-2 DVD, playing on the eMac. Although a little was lost from the sides of the television print, it was certainly not scanned & panned. In contrast, a great deal of the picture was cropped from the top and bottom on the ‘widescreen’ DVD. I can’t take screen-shots of the television alas!

“The composition seemed to me to be more satisfying in the television print. Low ceilings and doorways help to give the picture a greater depth of field. Exteriors also benefitted and appeared to have been framed with the squarer ratio in mind. Take the mountain-range where Marion takes a fateful fork in the road: this shot is handsomely-composed in the television print with the rolling mountains fully in the frame with sky above. On the DVD, the tops of the mountains are brutally lopped off and the composition seems flatter.

“Shots of Marion driving are so commonly reproduced as to be nearly as iconic as the shower scene. Yet some details are entirely invisible on the DVD. For instance the curved speedometer is illuminated beneath the windscreen-wiper — only the moulding is visible as a dark region on the DVD. You might also never realize that the steering wheel has an inner concentric chromium horn.

“The Bates Motel has an illuminated office sign over the door. It is in full view in many more shots in the 4:3 print. Its glow is detectable in some shots on the DVD but the sign itself has been cropped. I am sure Hitchcock wanted it to be seen: it may remind the viewer of the site of Marion’s crime and the way it continues to glow suggests that Norman’s work is continuing.

“The low ceilings and the oppressive stuffed birds of the study are again iconic yet one of the best shots is of a large owl whose outspread wings cast a giant shadow on the ceiling. You will see the owl and miss the shadow completely on the DVD. It dominates the scene as it should on the television print.

“The compositional use of circles in the shower scene is often commented on. Yet the famous reverse zoom shot as the camera screws and retreats from Marion’s face is much less effective when most of the twist has been completed before her lower face is in view. Slightly later, the rounded lines of the basin Norman washes in are cropped on the DVD.

“The hooks on the shower curtain are entirely cropped from one shot – making a very dull frame entirely made up of shower-curtain on the DVD. The hooks are surely the point of the shot as they are later to be ripped off.

“I watched only the first half of the film but time after time, the composition seems more satisfying in the television ratio. It is well-known that Hitch used his TV crew to make the film on a tight budget. It was certainly conceived as a cinema-event — offering the viewers shocking things they could not see on television. So it’s ironic that telly should turn out to be showing us things the DVD misses out! Now, again, the question is just how much of the picture was seen in the cinema?”

A Swedish fan named Matewan offered the following thoughts:

“Psycho was photographed in open matte. That is the same as 1.37:1. But the viewing ratio is 1.78:1. And that is exactly the format of the DVD releases. The 35 mm prints was released with the open matte format and was cropped on screen in the cinemas.

“But there is one scene where the frame is cropped in all prints. The shower scene. The censorship of the early ’60s would never have agreed to release a movie where you could risk seeing certain parts of the female anatomy. But, as I recall, it was only the lower part of the frame that was cropped.

“Also you must keep in mind that a TV always have some overscan. Small portions of the frame is not visible because of that.

“I am absolutely sure that the ideal aspect ratio for Psycho would be the old European widescreen ratio 1.66:1. It’s not as claustrophobic as the 1.78:1 ratio but it’s not as high as 1.37:1. And you can trust me on this. I was a projectionist at a movie theatre with that ratio and Psycho looked far better there than on the DVD.

A note of personal sadness on the passing of politically connected Hollywood publicist Stephen Rivers, 55, who lost a prolonged battle with prostate cancer four days ago. He was a good egg who always dealt with me fairly and considerately. Rivers represented Oliver Stone, Kevin Costner, Jane Fonda and former CAA honcho Michael Ovitz among others, and he always had a line on whatever was going down (or coming up) within Hollywood’s liberal-activist family.

He was fast and energetic and, like any good publicist, extremely protective of his clients. After talking with Costner at a post-Oscar party 10 or 11 years ago I wrote that his head was as big as a buffalo’s, and Rivers responded right away — “Back off on that bison-head thing,” he wrote.

I’m presuming that the work on Warner Home Video’s forthcoming Bluray of the original King Kong (9.28.10) has already been completed so pleading for a de-graining of this film is, at this stage, three and a half months away from release, a moot point. But I’m going to anyway because at least I’ll be on the record as having done so, and because it may make a difference to the Movie Gods later on.

WHV’s Ned Price, George Feltenstein and their team of restorers, remasterers and Bluray transfer artists have repeatedly shown that that no one in the business is more knowledgable or exacting. Their exquisite (i.e., minimally grainy) Casablanca Bluray speaks for itself. For the most part their 2005 King Kong DVD (timed to capitalize on the Peter Jackson version) was a very welcome improvement/upgrade from previous masterings, so I’m not talking about overhauling old Kong too radically — just some digital touchups in this and that scene that will fix certain portions in which the grain smotherings are so intense that they flirt with absurdity.

Nonetheless, let’s hope that the WHV guys (a) haven’t recently succumbed to radical Criterion-style grain-monk theology (i.e., the home-video equivalent of Taliban fervor), (b) understand that certain portions of King Kong are simply too grainy for average eyeball consumption (particularly the scene when the freighter drops anchor off the coast of Skull Island in heavy fog), (c) further understand that Bluray only sharpens and intensifies the monochrome granules occupying a given frame, and (d) therefore came to the conclusion that they needed to hire John Lowry of Lowry Digital to de-granulate in a way that respects the integrity of the image but at the same time recognizes that a classic black-and-white film buried in an Iraqi grainstorm is a bad thing all around, and that the ghosts of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack are hovering over them like Bruno Ganz and whatsisname in Wings of Desire and quietly pleading that they do the right thing.

In response to yesterday’s story about about an alleged debate within Lionsgate about whether to release Sylvester Stallone‘s The Expendables with an R or a PG-13 rating, I was informed earlier today by a Lionsgate rep that the action pic “has always been conceived as an R-rated film, as Stallone himself has confirmed to other press outlets throughout the filmmaking process. There is not a PG-13 version of the film in the works, nor has there ever been. The MPAA R rating is official and final.”

Okay, fine…but it wasn’t always this cut and dried, at least as far as Expendables producer Avi Lerner has been concerned.

Last June Lerner told UGO reporter Rene Rosa that “there will be both PG-13 and R-rated cuts for The Expendables and they will test each to decide which to release. The Expendables is costing about $80 million dollars, thanks to so many real explosions, the star cast, and everything else that goes into making an action flick. The studio wants this film to be a big hit and Avi is hoping to turn it into a franchise — including whoever doesn’t die in the first film in subsequent films.”

In a 4.21.10 EW interview, it was stated that Stallone “promises a hard R. After all, just look at the cast, he says. ‘These guys are born hard R!'”

If you ask me Stallone’s quote indicated he was prevailing over a different point of view. He obviously won the argument, but Lerner was on the record about the PG-13 vs. R cuts, in part because of the experience of R-rated Kick Ass taking in only $47.5 million as of 5.30.10. Lerner wants the biggest possible opening for The Expendables, and so he naturally had thoughts about the R rating possibly interfering with this.

My eight-minute chat with John C. Reilly, a vulnerable and engaging lead in Cyrus, got whittled down to a 5 minute and 45 second one. I began by telling him I was sorry I’d never seen him play Stanley Kowalski in the 2005 Broadway production with the late Natasha Richardson. This led to the inevitable discussion about the dominance of Marlon Brando‘s Stanley, etc.

Enjoyable as they are, press junkets always seem to dominate everything else — everything you might want to write and think about sorta gets pushed aside. Which isn’t to say today’s Cyrus junket, held at the Grammercy Park hotel, wasn’t a complete pleasure. I just didn’t get much done. The day included intriguing chats with co-directors Mark and Jay Duplass, and costars John C. Reilly and Marisa Tomei.

Cyrus co-directors Jay and Mark Duplass, top floor conference room, Grammercy Park hotel — 6.10, 1:10 pm.

Grammercy Park hotel.

Mark, Jay Duplass during round-table session.

To mark the 60th Anniversary of the start of the Korean War, Turner Classic Movies is running a 24-hour marathon of Korean War movies on 6.24 starting at 8 pm. So what’s the explanation for their not including Lewis Milestone‘s Pork Chop Hill, which is certainly one of the best about that conflict. You could argue that it’s the best.

The roster includes The Steel Helmet (1951), Men of the Fighting Lady (1954), Men in War (1957), Tank Battalion (1958), The Bamboo Prison (1954), All the Young Men (1960), Hell in Korea (1956), Take the High Ground! (1953), Time Limit (1957), and The Rack (1956).

I love it when well-made action sequences deliver adrenaline surges you can really trust. By which I mean action and adrenaline so alarmingly palpable that it almost feels surfable. For me, the last time I felt this thing the way it was meant to be felt was in Alfonso Cuaron‘s Children of Men — a landmark dystopian epic that raised the bar on action sequences by adhering to a strict you-are-there POV (i.e., a single perspective with no cheap-ass cutting from 117 different angles) and shooting with long unbroken takes.

For me, Joe Carnahan‘s The A-Team (20th Century Fox, 6.11) delivers the exact opposite effect as Children of Men. No actual excitement, no honest thrills, no trustworthy adrenaline, no conviction, and edited so frantically and mindlessly that you can’t tell what the hell is going on (and after ten or fifteen minutes of this you don’t want to know).

The A-Team is the machismo equal of the Sex and the City 2 — it tarnishes the reputation of guy films the way SATC2 blackened the term “chick flick” for years if not decades to come.

The A-Team delivered waves of intense loathing mixed with that familiar sensation (which I initially tried to describe after seeing Sherlock Holmes last December) of literally being poisoned with a clear plastic tube snaking out from the screen and jabbed into a vein in my arm.

The A-Team is pure cartoon-fizz bullshit — as scuzzy and value-less as this kind of testosterone pornography can possibly get. There’s nothing quite as boorish and deadly as a movie that believes it’s putting out the good stuff — giddy hilarity, wow-level excitement, popcorn razzle-dazzle — when it’s actually doing nothing of the kind. It’s like a rabid dog that needs to be tasered and sent to the pound and put down.

Carnahan, the once-admired Narc guy who’s thoroughly finished in my book, is, of course, the obnoxious force behind it all. I’m not saying he needs to be put down also, but Carnahan does need to be arrested and constrained and flown to a remote prison compound in Kampuchea. He’ll be given a decent home with wifi and a 52″ plasma flatscreen and all the other comforts, but he doesn’t leave for a minimum of five years. No coming back to the States, and definitely no more gigs as a director until 2015. I’m serious. Because movies like The A-Team are like factories pouring polluted smoke into the air and turning the water table rancid.

I need to get myself over to a Cyrus junket in Manhattan. I’ll finish this later. But the woman who wrote this review is a kiss-ass.

I love Tom Cruise‘s Les Grossman character as much as the next guy, but I wouldn’t want to hang with him all through the day and night. Les is comic relief — a guy you cut away to when you want to chuckle at some bespectacled, bald-headed rage monkey bellowing, howling and threatening to cut off the heads of other guys on the phone. You don’t want to get too close to a guy like this. He’s not Jerry Maguire. You want to laugh at his blitzkreig animal fury for four or five minutes and duck out of the room and go somewhere else.

So I really don’t see how Les carries a film, which is what the big news was today — i.e., an all-Les, all-the-time Les Grossman movie produced by Paramount and MTV Films, co-produced by Cruise and Red Hour Films’ Ben Stiller and Stuart Cornfeld with Michael Bacall (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) writing the screenplay.

“Les Grossman’s life story is an inspiring tale of the classic human struggle to achieve greatness against all odds,” Stiller said in an official announcement. No, that’s not his story. Les Grossman’s story is a fitfully funny tale of the classic urge to rape, pillage, murder and destroy your enemies in life, and to murder their children and wives and friends and mistresses and neighbors in the bargain — to slice open their stomachs with Bowie knives and splatters their intestines on the floor.