Early this morning HE reader Frank Booth, commenting about the Francis Coppola/Robert Harris restoration of the Godfather films, made a good point about an irritant in the original 1972 film — one that’s been bothering me for decades and which could have been fixed, if Coppola had been so inclined.

He was speaking, of course, about the second-act beating scene in which James Caan‘s Sonny laughably air-punches Gianni Russo‘s Carlo. [See YouTube clip.] There’s no missing the mistake because the shot is perfectly positioned to catch it — a nice clean side-angle. And it’s so distinct that it takes you right out of the film. When Booth saw a theatrical screening “it took a minute or so of the Sicilian wedding for the audience to stop giggling,” he says. “Very unfortunate.”
And yet despite all the digital re-dos and remasterings, not to mention that massive re-edit of Parts I and II that resulted in The Godfather Saga in the mid ’70s, Coppola has left that mistake in — minor, yes, but one that slightly interferes with the enjoyment of this film each and every time. All he would have to is cut away from the Sonny-Carlo beating for a a second or two and show…whatever, one of the hoods standing nearby, one of the little kids watching the fight, a master shot from a different angle. There must be extra footage lying around. All Coppola would need is 24 to 36 frames.
If you had directed The Godfather, would you want that mistake to remain in the definitive print for centuries to come? I wouldn’t. If George Lucas can make Greedo shoot first, Francis Coppola can fix Sonny’s air punch. And then Paramount Home Video can put out a whole new Godfather on Blu-ray and DVD. Honestly? I would buy it. I really would.

During a 9.16 promotional visit to a Manhattan Best Buy store, Steven Seagal spoke to MTVs Josh Horowitz and revealed the state of his political awareness. Many people go through life tuning stuff out, but Seagal’s admission is amazing.

The Times Online‘s Douglas Rankine has written a fanboy piece about a recent tour of George Lucas‘s ILM facility at San Francisco’s Presidio. The idea of a presumably seasoned journalist in 2008 still being caught up in the lore of Lucasfilm/Star Wars — feeling that tingle of excitement as he stands in front of a Yoda fountain or sips coffee in the Javva Hutt — is close to pathetic. The Lucas brand is totally devalued outside of the under-10 crowd, and this guy is still going “Ooh, wow…pant, pant.”

Four days ago, while I was off doing something else, the 23/6 guys posted this mildly funny close-captioned video:

Update: An apparent policy not to screen Ed Harris‘s Appaloosa (New Line/WB, 10.3) for critics in local markets is being corrected. I reported this morning that screenings hadn’t been scheduled in Portland and Arizona, but I’ve since been told by the Arizona Daily Star‘s Phil Villarreal that a press screening was suddenly set up today, after my earlier story ran.

Viggo Mortensen, Ed Harris in Appaloosa

Las Vegas Review Journal critic Carol Cling also told me that it’s being press-screened for her territory; same message from Dan Lybarger in the Kansas City area. So either things weren’t as bad as suspected or local WB reps are now getting things in gear.
Villareal and the Oregonian’s Shawn Levy told me this morning that Appaloosa is not being screened for them. I asked Appaloosa’s exec producer Michael London what the story was, and he didn’t get back.
The early reports seemed to argue with an upbeat 9.19 Conde Nast Portfolio column by Fred Schruers, called “New Life for a New Line Movie,” that says Warner Bros. seems to be getting squarely behind the film.
Schruers first explains how there was initial trepidation on the part of Harris and London that Warner Bros. might not fully support Appaloosa, a New Line production that became part of the WB release calendar when New Line company was folded into WB behemoth.
Schruers writes that “in his first meeting with the Warner Bros. marketing executives after the merger, Harris recalled that the outlook for his sober Western was decidedly downbeat. ‘I was getting the feeling they were going to throw it the dogs, or straight to DVD,’ Harris said.”
“We naturally had a lot of trepidation” after Warner Bros. absorbed New Line, London is quoted as saying. “But once the studio began really working on the movie, they started getting excited about their marketing materials. They got a great trailer out there.

Jeremy Irons, Viggo Mortensen

“Now, after the Toronto [Film Festival showings], Warners seems genuinely invested in the movie succeeding,” London states.
No screenings in Portland or Tuscon doesn’t sound like genuine investment to me. I can understand crappy programmers not being screened, but Appaloosa is a better-than-passable tweener. I wasn’t over the moon about it, but it’s certainly not a burn. It grabbed me for the most part, and at no point did it irritate or piss me off — a significant thing from my perspective. It’s not half bad. Engrossing, interesting, handsomely shot, character-driven.
“It’s a tiny bit better than James Mangold‘s 3:10 to Yuma,” I wrote in Toronto. “It’s got a nice modest feel to it. And it’s nicely shot, very well acted (particularly by Harris, Viggo Mortensen and bad-guy Jeremy Irons) and ‘engaging’ as far as it goes.”
And a fair number of journos who saw it in Toronto posted admiring reviews. N.Y. Post critic Lou Lumenick called it “the best Western since Open Range [that] shows there’s still life in this most unfashionable of genres.” Time‘s Richard Corliss wrote that “in its fidelity to western verities, Appaloosa may seem radical to today’s viewers. At a time when images in all visual media bombard the brain, the western — the one original American film form — moves at the pensive pace of a European art film.”

Here’s Levy’s account: “Before Toronto, the local rep” — the Seattle-based Terry Hines & Associates — “contacted us wanting to know if we’re interested in speaking to Ed Harris about Appaloosa. We said sure, show us the movie, and they said okay, we’ll set something up. The deadline came and went. Then the picture got onto the release schedule, and the other day — this is a movie that’s coming right up, opening on 10.3 — and they said, ‘Oh, it’s not being screened in Portland.'”
Villarreal said the local WB/New Line rep has told him “nothing [is] planned right now” as far as showing Appaloosa to Arizona critics.
“Almost every week something is not being screened for the press up here,” says Levy. “Or they show it at the very last minute. You can’t see it, you can’t see it, you can’t see it…oh, you can!
“30 to 40 films per year don’t get screened in Portland,” Levy says. “I would say three to four each month. That’s thirty or forty per year — 10% of their annual product — that they don’t want to show people. And Appaloosa has about a 58 rating on Metacritic….it’s not shit.”
Here’s another, somewhat unsual take, conveyed in a couple of excerpts from A.O. Scott‘s review in the N.Y. Times: “It’s not a great western, and, as I’ve suggested, it doesn’t really try to be. This one shows a square jaw and a steely gaze, but also a smile and a wink. There is no shortage of killing — it’s a large part of how Virgil Cole, Mr. Harris’s character, makes his living — but Appaloosa works best as a cunning, understated sex comedy.”

Four days ago, in a piece titled “You Give Out Too Many Stars,” Roger Ebert offered the following to partially explain his general attitude as he sits down to watch a film: “I like movies too much. I walk into the theater not in an adversarial attitude, but with hope and optimism (except for some movies, of course). I know that to get a movie made is a small miracle, that the reputations, careers and finances of the participants are on the line, and that hardly anybody sets out to make a bad movie. I do not feel comfortable posing as impossible to please.”
Nobody who loves movies goes into a screening with an adversarial attitude. I certainly don’t. I always feel at least a twinge of hope when the lights go down, and often a good deal more than that. But there’s no such thing as a totally virginal viewing. Anyone with their ear to the ground goes into a film knowing what the shot is and what the players have done before — their talent, potential, past glories and (now and then) regrettable tendencies. Every movie is a big ball of wax. And seeing a film with all this forearmed stuff in your head is what makes it an adventure, and sometimes a very special pleasure.
And due respect to Roger, but it’s never as simple as “hardly anybody sets out to make a bad movie.” Quite a few people make movies with the aim or hope that their film will work on its own low-rent terms, or at least that the studio chiefs will be happy with it given the hurdles that everyone had to deal with, or that it’ll at least be popular with the backwater ticket-buyers (if not the big-city critics and bloggers). Most people in any profession just want to keep working and get along. Very few people have the nerve or the vision or the talent to defy convention and swing for the bleachers. Fewer still have the focus and confidence to just hit the ball out of the infield with a clean crack of the bat. And as we all know, sometimes the greatest hitters strike out.
True, sometimes a director looking to make a good-enough film will surprise everyone (including himself or herself) and come up with something exceptional or delightful or at least better than expected. But it’s always sublime when a talented, ready-to-rock filmmaker has the heat and the inspiration (or used to have these things and has somehow found a way to get them back again) and walks up to the plate knowing precisely what’s about to happen.

I can’t speak with any authority about the forthcoming restored Godafther discs (being called “The Coppola Restoration” but more precisely the hands-on work of restoration guru Robert Harris) because, I’m told, the quality of the work isn’t that pronounced unless you watch it on Blu-ray with a 46″ or 50″ Plasma or LCD flat screen.

A DVD Beaver frame capture from the Blu-ray version of the restored Godfather.

A DVD Beaver frame capture from the DVD version.

And for the umpteenth time, I don’t own either of these devices. Maybe I’ll spring later this year. Depending. I know I have to get with it.
The word from properly-equipped reviewers with good eyes is that the the original Godfather and The Godfather, Part II do indeed look better than ever. Upgraded, finessed and made to look as terrific as they’ll ever look on a home screen. (I’m ignoring The Godfather, Part III for obvious reasons.) One reviewer said the restored versions have a bit more of a reddish quality.
On top of which Harris has told me that the various frame captures we’ve been seeing on various home theatre sites are not accurate representations of how the Blu-ray and DVD versions look. Not really. Too many tech variables, he says. One frame-capture that gets it half-right, he allows, is the one that ran on Brad Brevet‘s Rope of Silicon that shows the differing color schemes in the Paramount logo. The restored version has a sepia-tone thing going on, while the older version has a standard bluish-creamy-light gray scheme.
I did, however, see a 4K projection of the restored Godfather at a special, super-secret screening on the Warner Bros. lot last fall, and the truth is this: (a) it looked superb — those wonderfully burnished Gordon Willis colors have never been put forth with greater love or precision but (b) it didn’t exactly make my eyes pop out of their sockets on metal springs. It’s not like the Godfather films have ever looked that bad. For my money the last set of Godfather DVDs (i.e., the ones that came out in May 2004) look pretty damn good.
I’m trusting that the new Blu-ray versions will look somewhat (perhaps even strikingly) better, but the main reason for the Coppola-Harris restoration wasn’t to necessarily blow everyone’s socks off but to restore these films — to yes, make them look as good as they did when they first came out of the lab in ’72 and ’74 (again — forget Part III), but also to render the elements in their best possible condition, fully preserved and protected fur future generations.

The Paramount logos are they appear in the differing versions; the new restored version is on the right.

Now comes the heresy portion…ready? One reason — perhaps the reason — that the restored Godfather pics look very handsome but not necessarily drop-your- pants wowser is because Harris and Coppola went with the original, slightly grainy look of both. Grain purists believe that grain is integral, essential, vital — as important as needle-sharp focus or proper framing or the original colors not being drained of their vibrancy. Coppola and Harris did the absolutely correct thing, of course, by rendering the films exactly as they were shot and meant to be seen back in the day. It would have been a scandal if they hadn’t gone this route.
But I am not a fool for grain, and if I were running Paramount Home Video I would be issuing simultaneous grain-rape versions of the three Godfather films. Versions that would look that much cleaner, sharper, spiffier. The same darkness, the same amber-lit tones, the same Willis palette…only a bit less filmy. If PHV did release grain-rape versions, people would indeed be going “wow!,” “holy shit!” and “Jesus, this is really different!”
I realize this is a bad thing to be discussing, much less asking for. Only a Philistine who doesn’t understand or appreciate the natural beauty of celluloid — someone disrespectful, plebian, coarse — would even conceive of such a thing…right? But all I’m saying is that I’d like to be able to see grain-rape versions as a Philistine option. For people like me, I mean. I’m one of the few who really love and cherish the grain-rape version of PHV’s Sunset Boulevard, so you know where I’m coming from.
I’m not the only one to think along these lines. I’ve been told by an excellent authority that a few minutes of footage from the original Godfather — the third-act garden scene between Marlon Brando and Al Pacino (“He reads the funny papers,” “Senator Corleone, Governor Corleone…something,” “We’ll get there, pop”) — were given the grain-rape treatment, and that it was viewed by some on the Godfather restoration team, and that the result was fairly stunning.
Why was this even done, given the commitment to adhere precisely to the original look? Beats me, but I’m told it was.

I’m not challenging Summit Entertainment’s decision to wait until sometime in ’09 to release Kathryn Bigelow‘s The Hurt Locker, which, even with its modest shortcomings, is unquestionably one of the best crafted, big-jolt action thrillers of the year. Well, actually I am. Why not open it on a modest platform basis in December and then put it out in late January or February, say?

I understand Summit’s concerns. The fall and year-end periods are locked up tight in terms of theatres and heavy-duty competition. It’s a scary time for indie-sized distributors right now, and it’s a murderously expensive proposition to open a film over the next three and a half months. Plus there’s no guarantee that the ostriches who’ve refused to see other Iraq-themed films won’t do the same here. (I still believe that all the people who voted for Bush in ’04 should be forced to watch each and every Iraq War film, in the same way Alex was forced to watch violent films in Clockwork Orange with those eyelid-clamp devices and eyedrops.)
Summit’s decision feels disappointing for three reasons. One, The Hurt Locker is not just an Iraq War movie — it’s a first-rate thriller that works (at least partially) as a kind of revisiting of James Cameron‘s Aliens. Second, all strong movies based upon real-life experience and set in a fluid, ongoing situation like the Iraq War obviously lose potency and timeliness when they sit on a shelf. (Bigelow’s film began shooting, remember, in Jordan right after Brian DePalma finished filming Redacted, and that film played at last year’s Venice and Toronto festivals and opened ten months ago.) And third, it just feels wrong for a film as good as this to be kept out of the year-end derby, although I wouldn’t necessarily call it Best Picture material. (Thrillers never make it on this level.) It’s certainly good enough to potentially end up on Ten-Best critics lists, and it’s at least plausible that Jeremy Renner could drum up some Best Actor heat.
“Set in Baghdad and the full maelstrom of that godforsaken conflict,” I recently wrote, “this is a full-power, nail-biting, bomb-defusal suspense film that gradually becomes a kind of existential nerve ride about the risk and uncertainty of everything and anything, plus an explanation of the addiction that war is for some guys who go through it and can’t quite leave it alone.
“The Hurt Locker is absolutely a classic war film in the tradition of Platoon, The Thin Red Line, Pork Chop Hill, Paths of Glory and the last 25% of Full Metal Jacket, and it damn well better be acquired by someone and set for release sometime between now and 12.31. Because I’m getting tired of this shit.”

I’m sorry, but a major second-tier film festival like Zurich’s offering a big career achievement award to Sylvester Stallone is an all-around diminisher — half-comedic and half-grotesque. And Variety‘s Steven Gaydos trying to put a gloss on this is…well, business-as-usual for Variety, of course, but also, no disrespect, unseemly.
The number of titanic godawfuls that Stallone has given the movie world cannot be glossed over — Rhinestone, Cliffhanger, Victory, Over The Top, Cobra, Paradise Alley, FIST, Stop of My Mom Will Shoot, Nighthawks, Staying Alive, etc. Decade in and decade out, the man’s instincts and brush strokes have been crude and garish. He’s never once gone the dry, subtle, less-is-more route with anything….not once.
Out of 56 movies Stallone has acted in, directed or voiced, a grand total of seven (three of which are products of his own personal vision) are generally considered to be somewhere between very good, good and half-decent — the original Rocky, First Blood, Judge Dredd (Stallone’s performance was very droll), Copland, the voicing of “Weaver” in Antz, Rocky Balboa and the ’08 Rambo (an inspired looney-tunes, porno-violent comedy which the guy audience very much enjoyed).