Two days ago the legendary, famously cantankerous Armond White, film critic for the New York Press, was (a) re-elected as the 2009 chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle, and (b) also elected 2008 vice-chair. The Hollywood Reporter‘s Gregg Goldstein reported yesterday that the NYFCC will vote on the year’s best Dec. 10 vote on 12.10, and that the awards ceremony will happen on 1.5.09.
When I think of White, I think of his uniform approvals of (to the best of my recollection) just about every Steven Spielberg film ever made, including “the excellent, excellent” Munich. I’m also reminded of White’s attempt last year to dissuade the NYFCC from giving to give Sidney Lumet a Life Achievement Award, by way of an impassioned speech in front of the group.

The answer to the Touch of Evil aspect-ratio controversy contained in the release of the 50th anniversary DVD is simple, and shame on those who would needlessly complicate it. All 1950s film that were captured with a protected aspect ratio of 1.37 to 1 should always be mastered for DVD at that aspect ratio. Or at least at 1.66 to 1. I can’t over-emphasize how despicable I find 1.85 to 1 croppings of Eisenhower- and Kennedy-era films.

There is no aesthetic benefit at all — zero — to chopping the tops and bottoms off an image that was protected for 1.37 to 1. The reborn Gordon Gekko’s new slogan: Tall and boxy is good. It harms no one to release a taller fuller image. The DVD distributors are simply looking to put out an image that fits within 16 x 9 aspect ratio of high-def plasma and LCD screens. They want everything to be “wide.”

Don’t believe so-called experts who claim that 1.85 was the projection norm in the ’50s — it wasn’t absolutely. It was 1.66 to 1 here and there, and 1.85 here and there; it was even 1.37 here and there. Why have so many ’50s and ’60s films been masked for laser disc and DVD at 1.66 to 1? For the hell of it? Remember the travesty of Shane, shot in 1.33 (or 13.7) to 1, and then projected in theatres at 1.66 to 1 to accomodate the then-new appetite for wider-screen imagery? The same kind of revisionist horseshit has been happening for years in the DVD market.

HE reader Robert Hunt contends that Hollywood historian Richard Maltby, writing in his book “Hollywood Cinema” (which I’ve read but have no copy of right now), argued that “1.85 wasn’t accepted as the standard aspect ratio by the SMPTE until 1960.”

Some Came Running‘s Glenn Kenny was written about this in a fashion that I find a little too laissez-faire. Here it is:

“The facts are these: Director Orson Welles and cinematographer Russell Metty shot Touch of Evil in the so-called ‘Academy ratio’ of 1.37:1. And…well, actually, as far as the universally accepted facts are concerned, that’s where they end.

“There is plenty of documentation attesting that it was Universal Studios policy, mid-1953 or so, to have all their releases theatrically projected at the wider 1.85:1 ratio, via a ‘hard matte’ (a plate with a rectangular opening placed in front of the projector’s lens), with the Academy ratio reserved for TV airings of films (1.37 fitting almost exactly correctly on old-style television screens).

“Kehr’s commenters include a great number of folks who have seen Touch of Evil screened theatrically at 1.37. Did the projectionist make an error? Is the documentation concerning Universal’s policy wrong? Did Welles and Metty compose for 1.37 without realizing that the film would be projected at 1.85?

“A lot of questions with no, apparently, definitive or cut-and-dried answers. What is sure is that the new Touch of Evil edition offers three versions of the film–the compromised but still absolutely classic theatrical release, a ‘preview’ edition that hews closer to Welles’ vision than the eventual theatrical release, and the ingenious, controversial 1998 ‘restored’ version put together by scholar/preservationists Rick Schmidlin and Jonathan Rosenbaum — all in 1.85. Former Cahiers du Cinema critic Nicolas Saada calls this a ‘disaster’ over at Dave’s site.

“A host of others, who are also discussing the decision over at the Criterion forum, point to the evidence apropos Universal’s policy. The Lafayette Theater’s Pete Appruzzese, a man I defer to in all manners technical, says he’s run Touch of Evil in both 1.37 and 1.85 and that to his eye the 1.85 version is correct. Dave Kehr feels the 1.85 version looks ‘tight.'”

Then again Kenny wrote the following within Kehr’s talkback section: “Let’s start a collection to raise enough money so that Craig and the MOC guys can convince Universal to license them Touch of Evil for a Blu-ray MOC release in 1.33. Put me down (seriously) for $500 in support.”

Here’s a German comparison site, copied from Dave Kehr’s TOE page.

There’s no earthly reason to believe or presume that Welles and Metty would have preferred that Touch of Evil be seen by future generations in a 1.85 to 1 aspect ratio. Any idiot can look at the 1.37 version on tape and the new cropping and come to this conclusion. There is a word for the 1.85 cropping on the just-out three-disc DVD set, and that word is “vandalism.”

My earlier absence today was due to errands, two meetings and aimless running around. I also had to buy a nice shirt-and-tie combo to wear at a $5000-per-person Joe Biden fundraiser I’m attending at the Pacific Design Center starting at 6 pm. But the real action this evening will be on Late Night with David Letterman when John McCain finally shows up and sits there and plays the good sport. Will Letterman take pity or…?

Created by the guys at 23/6.

Here are some stats provided by Fandango about “more than 3,000 moviegoers” they’ve interviewed who are planning to see Oliver Stone‘s W. (opening tomorrow).
51% are male, and 58% are ages 25 to 49. 23% classify themselves as liberal; 22% as moderate and 18% as conservative. (What about the other 37%?) 34% say they voted for George W. Bush in a previous election. (People are admitting to this?) 27% say they will vote for John McCain, and 53% say they will vote for Barack Obama.
67% want to see it because of Oliver Stone‘s reputation as a controversial filmmaker. 10% say the presidential and vice presidential debates have made them more interested in seeing the movie. 6% say the film might impact how they vote in the upcoming presidential election.

So what’s the deal with Max Payne (20th Century Fox, 10.17), the Mark Wahlberg actioner that’s based on an effin’ video game that I wouldn’t see at knifepoint? On one hand, you have a 10.15 review from Variety‘s Justin Chang; on another (and I never do this), you have a reaction from cre8ed@hotmail.com on the film’s IMDB page.

And I don’t know, man. I’m feeling a somewhat cautious, carefully parsed current from Chang but a kind of no-holds-barred, bolt-of-clumsy-truth vibe from cre8ed.
It was obvious from the ads and the trailer that Payne is a straight-paycheck, hold-your-nose-and-do-the-jobber for Wahlberg. (All I want to do is watch that SNL talking-to-animals clip again.) Almost every youngish name actor does a film like this now and then. Except DiCaprio, I mean.
“Stylishly made, armed to the teeth and ludicrous in the extreme,” Chang starts off, “Max Payne sends its eponymous antihero into New York’s underbelly on a deranged quest for revenge. Along the way, director John Moore” — a director I instantly discount for his work on the absurd Flight of the Phoenix and the not-good-enough Behind Enemy Lines — “unleashes every visual trick in his arsenal.”
We all know what that phrase means. We all know how movies that use “every visual trick” make us feel.
“The flashiest” of Moore’s tricks is “a hail of bullets that whoosh across the screen in delirious slow-motion — no doubt to distract auds from an increasingly risible story involving tattooed corpses, Norse mythology, demonic hallucinations and perhaps the weirdest cinematic reference yet to the war on terror,” says Chang.
Cre8ed wrote on 10.15 that he just returned from a much previously hyped film very disappointed. In a word, boring! I’m fairly forgiving with reviews, I usually give most films the benefit of the doubt especially films based on video games. This film is based extremely loosely on the game. Some action scenes were cool but most were the same old same old repetitive shoot-outs we have seen a thousand times before.”
“This gets a big 5 out of 10. I will not be buying the DVD on this one.”

“It is often said in politics that a candidate’s strength is also his weakness,” writes Matt Bai in a 10.19 N.Y. Times Sunday Magazine piece about Barack Obama and working-class whites. “Obama’s greatest asset as a candidate, the trait that has enabled him to overcome both a thin resume and the resistance of his own party’s establishment, is his placidity.

“Even more than through his ability to give a rousing speech (plenty of other candidates, from Ted Kennedy to Howard Dean, could do that), Obama has differentiated himself from recent Democrats by conveying a sense of inner security that is highly unusual in a business of people who have chosen to spend every day asking people to love them. He does not seem like a candidate who’s going to switch to earth tones in his middle age or who’s going to start dressing up in camouflage to rediscover his inner Rambo. Obama is content to meet the world on his terms, and something about that inspires confidence.
“And yet that same lack of pathetic neediness may in fact be a detriment when it comes to persuading voters who, culturally or ideologically, just aren’t predisposed to like him. I once heard a friend of Obama’s compare him with Bill Clinton this way: if Clinton sees you walking down the other side of the street, he immediately crosses over to shake your hand; if Obama sees you coming, he nods and waits for you to cross.”
And by the same token, it can probably be assumed that if he makes a small mistake, Barack Obama would never stick his tongue out and go “aaaahhh!” like John McCain briefly did after last night’s debate. This is a very appealing trait. It’s a Republican/conservative thing to briefly wig out and be theatrical (like that awful female MSNBC daytime news anchor whom I can’t stand) but it’s also a loose, what-the-hell thing to do in front of a mixed crowd, and something in me responds well to this.

Art by Barry Stock adorns the cover of this week’s Willamette Week, which calls attention to the Oregon weekly’s election recommendations.

As I wrote a week ago, Tomas Alfredson‘s Let The Right One In (Magnolia, 10.24) “is easily the most strikingly unusual vampire pic that anyone’s seen in I don’t know how long. The fact that Overture Films and Spitfire Pictures are developing a U.S. remake with Cloverfield‘s Matt Reeves to direct speaks volumes. It’s one of the standout originals of ’08.” Here’s the trailer:

MCN’s David Poland and L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein got angry earlier today about not being invited by Universal to see Ron Howard‘s Frost/Nixon in time to run reviews concurrent with Variety‘s Todd McCarthy review, which was posted today, as well as a review by the Hollywood Reporter‘s Kirk Honeycutt.
In fact Goldstein and particularly Poland were miffed that they weren’t invited to a specific screening held two days ago (Monday, 10.13.08) that McCarthy and Honeycutt were invited to and attended.
Poland makes some valid points in criticizing Universal’s trades-first Frost/Nixon screening policy. However, he also went off on In Contention‘s Guy Lodge by calling him a “non-pro” and his review an “AICN-style” type deal. It didn’t read that way to me. Here’s what In Contention‘s Kris Tapley had to say, and I’ve pasted here his final two graphs:
“In a nutshell, David was just left out in the cold, without the chance to anoint (or disassemble) Frost/Nixon before anyone else. End of story. Additionally, despite his insults, he is as ‘non-pro’ as the next guy. We’re all making a place at the table for ourselves. For some that means offering film coverage via global contribution. For others, it means muscling studios with inflated Oscar ad rates” — he’s talking about what Poland is charging per ad space — “based on the aggregation of other names and sources for the purposes of Oscar coverage.
“It is what it is. But like I said, I felt compelled to step in and defend Guy here, because nothing warranted this (but hey, we appreciate the link).”
One HE observation: I think it’s fair to say, given what people in London and Los Angeles have written, that in the space of the last 12 to 18 hours Frost/Nixon has been shown and at the very least been diminished as a Best Picture contender with any kind of real heat. It might become one of the five nominees anyway — the play was more than sturdy, and the film relies on the same basic bones — but there’s no disputing that Ron Howard‘s film has been dinged, bruised, shelled and even torpedoed today, and that it may be out of hot-and-heavy competition in the Best Picture race as a result. Maybe.
Frank Langella is a different story — at the very least he’s looking okay for a Best Actor nomination. Maybe. He was great in the play, that’s for sure. A landmark performance of its type.

Two more Frost/Nixon reviews from London — a pan from the Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw and a positive four-out-of-fiver from the Times Online‘s James Christopher.

“Frost/Nixon is an effective, straightforward bigscreen version of Peter Morgan‘s shrewd stage drama about the historic 1977 TV interview in which Richard Nixon brought himself down once again,” writes Variety‘s Todd McCarthy. So do terms like “effective” and “straightforward” counterbalance the less enthusiastic descriptions that have emerged? Calling a movie “effective” and “straightforward” is…how to say it? It’s a bit like describing a girl you met at a party last weekend as “smart,” “friendly” and “really nice.”
Ron Howard‘s movie, says McCarthy, “isn’t out to ‘get’ its much vilified subject as much as it tries to cast him as something of a tragic victim of his own limitations and foibles — tragic for the perpetrator and his country alike. Frank Langella‘s meticulous performance will generate the sort of attention that will attract serious filmgoers, assuring good biz in upscale markets, but luring the under-40 public will pose a significant marketing challenge.”