I’ve been complaining about muddy, murky movie dialogue for years, and enduring constant derision from the HE commentariat (“It’s your fault…hearing aids are cheaper now”). Will the shit talkers apologize now that the actual problem (bizarre sound-mixing habits) has been exposed? Of course not.

Vox copy: “Have you ever been watching a show or movie, and then a character delivers a line so unintelligible you have to scramble to find the remote and rewind? Or activate subtitles?

“Gather enough people together and you can generally separate them into two categories: People who use subtitles, and people who don’t. And according to a not-so-scientific YouTube poll we ran on our Community tab, the latter category is an endangered species — 57% of you said you always use subtitles, while just 12% of you said you generally don’t.

“Why do so many feel that they need subtitles? We got straight to the bottom of it in this explainer, with the help of dialogue editor Austin Olivia Kendrick.”

“Shitty Bull Sound,” posted on 8.5.07:

Every now and then someone writes a looking-back-on-Raging Bull piece (like this one from the Guardian‘s Ryan Gilbey, a nod to the film’s re-release in England on 8.17). And they all report that Martin Scorsese‘s classic wasn’t tremendously popular critically or commercially when it first opened in November of 1980. But what’ s never mentioned is that moviegoers couldn’t hear many of the quieter dialogue scenes with any real clarity, even in the better big-city theatres. And that this almost surely had an effect upon the general reception.

I distinctly remember watching a public screening of Raging Bull in the Sutton Theatre on 57th Street just before Thanksgiving, and leaning forward and cupping my ears and getting angry as I asked myself, “Dammit, why don’t they turn the damn sound up?” I had this reaction every time Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci or Cathy Moriarty were murmuring or muttering their thoughts in their middle-class Bronx apartments, or when “Tommy” the mafia guy was laying things out in his two quiet scenes.

Raging Bull‘s sound was apparently rendered with an intentionally murky-crude quality so it would seem unaffected and working-classy — the idea being that naturalism was equivalent to a kind of aural muck. This almost certainly resulted in tens of thousands of ear-cuppings across the nation given that the sound systems in all but a few big-city theatres back then were atrocious, for the most part. By today’s standards, it was truly the aural Dark Ages.

…but he could really turn on the warmth and humanity when called upon, and he had the kindest and gentlest eyes of all the classic marquee-brand actors of his generation. Which is why I’m disappointed with the Kino jacket art for a forthcoming 4K Bluray of 12 Angry Men. I’m sorry but those Fonda peepers are nowhere to be found. They belong to someone else.

I’m delighted with my Criterion Bluray version, and can’t imagine how a 4K bump (out on 3.28.23) could make that much of a difference. I sound like a broken record but still.

Sasha Stone and I just finished an hour-long chat about Tuesday morning’s (1.24) announcement of the ’23 Oscar nominations, and the obvious fact that Top Gun: Maverick, which will certainly be among the chosen few, is the only prospective nominee that feels truly commanding. Authoritatively, I mean.

Despite the familiarity and the formulaic strategy, TG:M is the only finalist that feels home–runnish…not to mention the achievement of having joined forces with Avatar: The Way of Avatar to save and even restore a classic, life-giving Hollywood dynamic (thrills, popcorn, warm seats) to exhibition itself…there’s no ignoring the metaphor.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is passionately supported (I’ll give it that) but on its own terms (reach, theme, imagination) and despite an excellent final line it drives sane people crazy.

The Fabelmans is basically a double that makes you feel more relieved than fulfilled when it ends.

For all the brilliance and audacity Tar underwhelms — Kubrick famously said that strong films connect for the feel rather than the think, and Tar is not much of a feeler.

The Banshees of Inisherin is also more weirdly thinky than feely.

I don’t know what Elvis is but it sure as hell is no triple or homer. The Bazzyness is draining.

Women Talking is an earnest whiff. Babylon, due respect, missed it. The corrosive cruelty delivered by All Quiet on the Western Front is unforgettable but not, in the annals of world cinema, unfamiliar.

At the end of the day Avatar: The Way of Water is more about knockout efficiency than the turning of a special key.

There’s something terribly somber and sobering in the idea of the David Crosby dynamo being silent and still, above and beyond the fact of a life having run its course and come to a natural end. I don’t like finality as a rule. I prefer the idea of fluidity, of a beating pulse and the constant search for action and opportunity. I don’t like it when a store closes and is all emptied out and boarded up with “for lease” signs pasted on the windows. Keep it going, sweep the floors, stock the shelves, pay the bills. All things must pass, of course, but not now…later.

Incidentally: On 1.19.23 NPR’s David Westervelt posted a Crosby tribute piece, and in the fifth paragraph he wrote the following: “Crosby, Stills & Nash at times would soar with electric jams. But their foundation was a unique California sound built on harmonies, acoustic guitars and a dose of self-awareness often missing in rock lyrics. Exactly where in LA’s Laurel Canyon Crosby, Stills & Nash first sang together is still debated, lost in a smoky haze.”

Actually, it’s not debated. In A.J. Eaton and Cameron Crowe‘s David Crosby: Remember My Name (’19), Crosby says the very first time they sang together and knew they really had something was in Joni Mitchell‘s kitchen, inside her modest-sized home at 8217 Lookout Mountain. Crosby says this to the camera while standing in front of Michell’s former pad. Who has ever claimed otherwise?

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Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale is a strange and shadowed study of self-imposed confinement. Brendan Fraser’s Charlie is a suffering sad sack, all right. I felt for the poor bloated guy, but what a tragedy. What a ghastly, grotesque experiment in plumbing the depths of regret and self-loathing, not to mention the drip-drip process of slow suicide.

Charlie’s choking-on-a-sandwich scene is one for the ages; ditto his eating binge + vomiting scene. Ditto his sweat-soaked, white-light death scene (i.e., my favorite moment in the film). James Whale and Todd Browning would be impressed; so would Montgomery Clift.

Obviously an intelligent filmed play, and mildly pleasurable for that. Fraser’s performance is a whopping, tearful freak show, but I felt the heart of it. And I was moved by that final gasp (partly a cry of release) when he finally goes to God. And yes, I’m proud that I got through it. I‘ve been terrified of watching this film for months, and now I’m past that hurdle. And I’ll never have to watch it again.