This is hilarious — a projection riff about Baz Luhrman‘s Australia written in November ’06. Red River…hah!

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” — quote attributed to Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Thomas, used in the opening credits of Amy Berg‘s Deliver Us From Evil and initially mentioned in this column 2 years and 3 months ago.

In his review of The International, N.Y. Press critic Armond White says that Clive Owen‘s “perpetually sullen, unshaven mug provokes dreadful flashbacks of his woebegone heroics in the ludicrous apocalypse-thrill-ride Children of Men.” We’re all familiar with Owen’s sullenness, but equating Children of Men with some kind of “dreadful”? It was my choice for Best Picture of 2006, and I knew whereof I spoke when I wrote this initial review.

White has to be the contrarian; he has to blow your mind, piss on your temple, show disgust for one of your all-time favorite films, etc. It’s his handle, I get that, but still.

White also provides a list of “recent feel-bad movies about international politics,” including Children of Men, Michael Clayton, Lord of War, Traitor, Rendition, Syriana, Redacted, In the Valley of Elah, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Kingdom, Stop-Loss, Vantage Point, the Bourne [films] and War, Inc., and says they’re all “essentially about glamorous cynicism.” Well, there’s obviously no way to address current or futuristic global political concerns without coming to some pessimistic-cynical conclusions, so the question is when making a film about this is do you make the world of your film appear glamorous or not? Which obviously could mean stylistically avant garde. If I were producing such a film, I would certainly approve of any glamour additive that didn’t distract from the aesthetic essence.

According to the photo editor of London’s Daily Mail, the below photo, chosen to illustrate an article by reverse-mortgage pitchman Robert Wagner called “I blamed myself for Natalie Wood’s death: Robert Wagner on the night his wife disappeared,” is a shot of Wagner and wife Natalie Wood in All The Fine Young Cannibals.

If the woman in this photo is Natalie Wood I’m Alanis Morissette. Look at her eyes and her teeth. Tell me she doesn’t summon thoughts of a flesh-eating ghoul ready to take a bite out of Wagner. Tell me she doesn’t look like a candidate to costar four years hence in Roger Corman‘s The Tomb of Ligea. (A reader informs that the actress is actually Susan Kohner, who retired in 1964 and later became the mother of Chris and Paul Weitz.)

So who’s worse at the end of the day? The Daily Mail photo editor or the woman who mentioned The Mysterious Case of Benjamin Button on the Chris Matthews Show this morning?

On the “tell me something I don’t know” portion of this morning’s Chris Matthews Show, a female guest announced that the first film that the Obamas had watched in the White House screening room was The Mysterious Case of Benjamin Button. Nobody coughed, smirked…nothing. Imagine the chuckling mockery that would result if I wrote a piece that referred to Treasury Secretary William Geithner. The Matthews blooper says something about the public’s attitude about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I think. But what?

The mystifying if not ridiculous success of Michael Bay and Marcus Nispel‘s Friday the 13th — $20 million yesterday, estimated to bring in over $50 million over the four-day President’s Day holiday — at least underlines the old truism about the movie business being recession- or depression-proof. Or that it tends to be, certainly, when there’s something playing that people unencumbered by taste are looking to see. A good thing, that. The sexual metaphor of slasher movies translates so fully. The dumbest people in the world get it, and that’s fine because every so often they need to feel they’re in on the joke.

Thematically-linked Blu-ray double features…sure. Although I’m wondering if I can stand to watch In Cold Blood again. Everyone has limits and there’s something awfully tedious and on-the-nose about it. Maybe it’s the way the Quincy Jones score sometimes tries to underscore the sentiment in a scene when it’s already dead obvious what you’re supposed to be feeling. (I hate scores that do that.) Maybe it’s Scott Wilson‘s performance, which seems too soft and charming given the notorious psychopath he’s supposed to be playing (i.e., Dick Hickock). It’s just that Conrad Hall‘s black-and-white widescreen cinematography is so choice.

From Bernnet Miller’s Capote

Robert Blake in Richard Brooks’ In Cold Blood.

“I think we can safely say that a woman like Gwyneth Paltrow has never in the history of NYC fallen in love with a 30-something” — a downbeat donkey, played by Joaquin Phoenix — “who lives with his parents in Brighton Beach.” So said Ben, a N.Y. Times commenter, early this morning about James Gray‘s Two Lovers. “Which pretty much ruins the movie as a serious work before you even see it, since it’s constantly reminding you of its inauthenticity.”

Add this gripe to my own about Vinessa Shaw being poorly cast as a slightly-too-nice Brooklyn neighborhood girl, and you’ve got both female leads in this film drawing flak.

Shaw is “too Fairfield County pretty, too poised and delicate to be a borough girl,” I wrote. “There are exceptions galore in real life, of course, but men and women from Brooklyn and Queens (i.e., those born and raised) tend to exude a slight coarseness. A coarseness that’s often vibrant and agreeable (I know New Yorkers and it’s not a cliche), but is also saddled, I feel, with a lack of curiosity in other realms.

“A wanting for worldly finesse, I mean. An Adrianna-from-The Sopranos quality. Not to mention that happily hunkered- down attitude about being ‘borough’ — a life of eating pizza, not quite dressing the right way and failing to learn to speak French or play piano. Not to mention the distinctive ethnic features and honky accents. (I’ve known exactly one woman in my life who was raised in Brooklyn but doesn’t look it or talk it.)”

That untitled Michael Moore documentary mentioned as a possible Cannes 2009 entry by Screen International‘s Mike Goodridge is either (a) some phantom doc no one’s ever heard of or (b) Moore’s currently shooting film about Wall Street chicanery which he’s said will be about “the biggest swindle in American history” as well as “the greatest crime story ever told.”

If it’s the latter it seems unlikely that Moore would have anything to show three months from now since he’s still looking for Wall Street veterans to come forward and spill the beans. That means he’s in the earlyish stages. If anything, I’m guessing that Moore will have, at best, a 15 minute reel to show next May, something to drum up interest for next year.

“I am in the middle of shooting my next movie and I am looking for a few brave people who work on Wall Street or in the financial industry to come forward and share with me what they know,” Moore posted last Wednesday on his site.

“Based on those who have already contacted me, I believe there are a number of you who know ‘the real deal’ about the abuses that have been happening. You have information that the American people need to hear. I am humbly asking you for a moment of courage, to be a hero and help me expose the biggest swindle in American history.

“All correspondence with me will be kept confidential. Your identity will be protected and you will decide to what extent you wish to participate in telling the greatest crime story ever told.”

The just-out Raging Bull Bluray “produces a more subtle visual improvement than many are used to seeing in high-definition,” writes DVD Beaver’s Henrik Sylow. “The contrast is superior” but “much more of the intended grain is [also] noticeable.” I remember the raw deglammed look and murky sound of Raging Bull when I first saw it at Manhattan’s Beekman theatre in 1980, so I know what the idea was back then and what this new Bluray is trying to recapture.

An avoidance of “pretty” was key. Scorsese wanted a flat visual representation of the primitive life of the LaMottas of the Bronx and Pelham Parkway, and no allowances whatsoever for sexy, satiny monochrome. I got it and the Beekman certainly projected that, but I was also gratified, frankly, when Raging Bull was cleaned up and enhanced on DVD three and a half years ago.

I’m not sure I want a Bluray that’s going to take me back to the Beekman. Who wants to shell out for a Raging Bull that provides a preponderance of grain and speckles? I’ll tell you who. The monks do. The Glenn Kenny/Dave Kehr crowd.

I was quite happy with the ’05 Raging Bull special edition DVD because it made the film look sharper and more silvery than ever before without sacrificing, obviously, the essential New York cruddiness of the thing. The textural pleasures of Raging Bull were captured by Michael Chapman‘s photography and Phil Abramson and Frederic C. Weiler‘s sets, and not by the diminished projection standards that existed 28 or 29 years ago.

The ’05 DVD also allowed me to hear Raging Bull much more clearly. Some of Joe Pesci‘s quiet dialogue scenes in the print that I saw projected at the Beekman (or at the Sutton on 57th Street) were so faint I was cupping my ears half the time.

The sound is presumably first-rate on the Blu-ray Bull but the visual trend among the high-end Blu-ray aesthetes, apparently, is to rough up the transfer and bring out the grain and speckles and whatnot — to avoid creating some arid digital upgrade in favor of a recreation of a somewhat worn celluloid print showing in the early days of the Reagan administration.

“The biggest differences,” Syklow says, “are the contrast and grain while I was a bit surprised at the amount of speckles.” And yet, he says, the Blu-ray is “far and away the most film-like image and faithful to theatrical of all editions.” The question is what does he really mean by “film-like”? Neighborhood theatre film-like (i.e., vaguely shitty) or Columbia screening-room quality (i.e., as good as it gets). I get a little bit scared when I hear grain-purist types say this. Because they live on a different planet.

Criterion has finally announced the release of its single-disc DVD of Peter Yates‘ The Friends of Eddie Coyle (’73). It comes out May 19th. Nothing much besides a remastered high-def version of the film, which Yates approved. Okay, there’s a Yates commentary track, a stills gallery and a booklet featuring a new essay by film critic Kent Jones and a 1973 Rolling Stone profile of Robert Mitchum, based on a set visit. Here‘s an mp3 of the coffee shop gun-talk scene between Mitchum and costar Steven Keats.

Hollywood & Fine’s Marshall Fine didn’t much care for Matteo Garrone‘s Gomorrah. It brought him down, made him feel badly. Well, you’re not supposed to “like” it. You’re supposed to let it in, sink into it, believe it, taste the ugliness, feel the menace, and be glad you’re not part of it, even with the recession and all.

Gomorrah is just not that into “entertaining” you. It’s supposed to make you go, “Holy shit, what a truly cold and unsparing depiction of an absolutely hellish existence, which I believed every friggin’ frame of.” After it’s over it’s supposed to make you run out of the theatre and down the main street of your home town (like Jimmy Stewart did in It’s A Wonderful Life) and happily yell out, “Howz it goin’, Walmart! How’re they hangin’, Ben and Jerry’s? Really good to see ya, Subway! How about a nice foot-long salami and cheese and jalapeno and lettuce and chopped tomato grinder? Heeeyyyy!”

Anyway, here‘s Fine, whacking this hard little film like some Bay of Naples hitman:

“Dark and downbeat, Gomorrah is another film that critics will champion and average filmgoers will scratch their heads over, while wondering how they let themselves get snookered — yet again — into coughing up the price of a movie ticket (or a video-on-demand fee) for a so-called important film.

“The book [it’s based upon] detailed how deeply the Mafia-like Camorra crime organization has burrowed in (in a Bush-era locution) to everyday Italian life in Naples and Italy in general. They haven’t just corrupted law enforcement and government officials; they’ve made themselves part of every facet of commerce, tainting all they touch.

“To his credit, Garrone does nothing to glamorize the criminals in his film. To call them gangsters would be to give them the same veneer of romantic fiction with which American movies have painted them — as though living outside the law is actually a noble calling, a strike against an unjust system.

“It’s not. And these aren’t gangsters. They’re criminals, thugs — some with more power or cunning than others but thugs nonetheless. They’re petty, murderous, and spreading rot to everything they touch. They don’t merely corrupt society; they infect it, causing despair and decay.

“Which is what makes Gomorrah such a joyless cinematic experience – more an assault than anything else. The director pulls the viewer directly into this mire and leaves him to fend for himself in a hellish, hopeless environment.”

Consider these current opinions of the film by an assortment of N.Y. Times readers.