Doug Liman‘s The Instigators, produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon‘s Artists Equity, is a half-comic heist thriller….give it to me. Written by Chuck Maclean and Casey Affleck, and starring Casey, Matt and Hong Chau, Michael Stuhlbarg, Paul Walter Hauser, Ving Rhames and Alfred Molina.

Will anyone see it theatrically when it opens on 8.2.24? Of course not. Because Apple Tv+ will begin streaming it a week later (8.9.24).

I’ve been waiting a long time to see the much-promoted 4K restoration of North by Northwest, and so I couldn’t resist attending yesterday’s Tribeca Film Festival screening at the Village East Angelika.

I had a reasonable expectation that the restorationists had enhanced Alfred Hitchock’s 1959 classic with a distinct visual bump effect (as in “whoa, this looks better than ever before!”).

This would have been due, I figured, to their having sourced the original 8-perf 35mm VistaVision camera negative with all restoration work completed in 6.5k, and then overseeing the creation of a 65mm negative and finally having Fotokem create a 70mm film print.

That 70mm print was what was shown at the Village East last night, and I have to be honest — it looked very nice but it didn’t blow me away, and it certainly didn’t make my eyeballs go “boinnnggg!” There was absolutely no “bump” effect, and I was sitting there going “what the fuck?” and “why am I not looking at the very best NXNW ever created or projected…not since the waning days of the Eisenhower administration but ever, especially given the 8K VistaVision negative scan?”

I’m not saying that Jim Hemphill’s 6.11 IndieWire piece on the NXNW restoration is bullshit, but…okay, I guess I am calling it bullshit because it makes you think “whoa, here’s my chance to see a great Hitchcock classic in the best visual condition ever!”

What I saw yesterday evening was just…very nice. Approvable. Agreeable but nothing to bounce up and down about on a trampoline.

Here’s why: 70mm presentations are no longer the cat’s meow. Creating a 70mm NXNW print is a fine, excellent thing in terms of archival preservation, but the sharpest and most vibrant way to present a digitally restored film (NXNW was scanned at 13K but restored at 6.5K, whatever the hell that means) upon a large screen is via 4K digital projection.

You’re losing two generations of clarity by (a) creating a 65mm negative and then (b) creating a 65mm print, so right away audiences are being shown a less-than-optimum image. And then you’re at the mercy of the projection standards at whatever given theatre (proper or improper foot lambert levels, sufficiently sharp or underwhelming sound).

So there’s no obvious enhancement and nothing to go crazy about, and the strong black levels, by the way, that are visible in the 2009 NXNW Bluray have been mostly removed or at least significantly dialed down. There’s nothing the least bit pinkish about the sky in this sequence, but there’s no question they’ve diminished the blacks.

The cropduster sequence, also, has now been tinted with a slight amber-light brown effect, which struck me as affected.

In short, if you want to see the very best rendering of this new Film Foundation-approved restoration, wait for the Bluray, which will “street” later this year.

As I was walking uptown after the screening, I felt like Sterling Hayden‘s General Jack D. Ripper in that Dr. Strangelove scene right after the Burpleson Air Force base surrender. Speaking to Peter Sellers‘ Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, Hayden says, “Those boys were like my children, Mandrake, and now they’ve let me down.”

…as I saunter uptown…”love this, love it so much”…sniffing that night aroma, gulping that Grammercy Park-area energy (which has its own particular character)…8:15 pm to 8:45 pm…

Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman is two thumbs up…way up!…on Pixar’s Inside Out 2 (Disney, 6.14). That means it’s almost certainly worth catching, but is it okay if I sidestep it anyway? I’d watch if Sutton was into it, but she’s too probably too young for mind-personality games. No offense but no thanks.

Gleiberman: “Inside Out, I would argue, was the last great Pixar movie. It had the audacity to build an entire world inside the mind of [a young girl named] Riley, and to turn that world — the warring emotions, the good and bad memories stored in collectible marbles — into a kind of enchanted philosophical amusement park.

“It [also] told a tale that was moving and profound…about what happens to all of us as we leave childhood behind — the way the illusions and innocence, the beautiful garden of who we were, must fall away.

“Inside Out 2 can’t shock us with its out-of-the-box imaginative daring the way Inside Out did. But the film’s director, Pixar animation veteran Kelsey Mann and screenwriters Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein” — named after the cows? — “build on the earlier film’s playful brilliance and come about as close as we could have hoped for to matching it.”

[Posted from a NYC-bound Metro North train — 4:30 pm] The only way to beat HE’s temporary comment-blocking glitch, I’ve discovered, is to post a story which doesn’t allow comments, and then copy and post the same story a second time and then comments will be allowed. It’s annoying but that’s the situation for now. Earlier this afternoon I posted the “Instant Combustion” story twice but my head was spinning from too much stuff to do, and I forgot to delete the first version. I’ve just trashed it. And now I have to post this story a second time…love it.

The only difference is (a) Dennis Hopper wasn’t the mad bus bomber but the hijacker, (b) there was no bomb on the bus set to explode if the bus slowed to under 50 mph, and (c) there was no Keanu Reeves or Sandra Bullock behind the wheel.

I knew in a millisecond that this Chanel model has “it” — something in the perfect symmetry of her features that makes you sit up.

We’re living through an age in which beauty isn’t the passport it used to be and may even be regarded suspiciously in some corners, but an unsuppressable “whoa” kicked in anyway.

Tougaard reminded me instantly of the late Rosenda Monteros, who played ”Petra”, Horst Buccholz’s love interest, in The Magnificent Seven (‘60) — the mostly silent peasant girl with the smoldering expression.

Monteros also costarred in Tiara Tahiti (‘62) with James Mason and John Mills.

I was amused and vaguely engaged by The Rutles, who flashed and then receded in 1978’s All You Need Is Cash. What was my reaction to the four Beatle-ish impersonators — Eric Idle, Ricky Fataar, John Halsey and Neil Innes? Meh, fine, whatevs — neither irritants nor charmers.

Sam Mendes’ not-yet-filmed or even written quartet of Beatles films will open in 2027, and my reaction to the four actors rumored to play the lads is, right now at least, vaguely defined by gloom and trepidation. My dominant thought is “are these guys going to create Fab Four impressions in a Rutles–like way…not in a satiric fashion, obviously, but in a way that sorta kinda underwhelms?”

Put another way, my basic attitude about the Mendes project —— and more particularly the casting of HE faves Paul Mescal and Barry Keohgan as Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr —- is partly hostile but mostly “I’d like to be able to survive this, but Jesus… really?”

Obviously very little physical resemblance — one of those submit-or-hate ensemble casting decisions that can’t hope to transport, much less astonish.

Harris Dickinson and Charlie Rowe might pass muster as John and George, but Mescal is too old (thick-featured, not slender enough, lacking that freshly-bloomed quality) to play 20something Paul, and the warlock-eyed, beestung-nosed Keohgan, 31, will be a total disaster as Ringo…way too old and certainly too satanic to become that easygoing, low-key, sad-eyed, vaguely frustrated guy in A Hard Day’s Night.

Ringo’s honker was bigger than Keohgan’s, but also narrower and much less of an eyesore.

I’m sorry but speaking as a Beatles fan the idea of two of HE’s most deeply loathed actors sullying the reputations of McCartney and Starr…talk about your tailspins of depression.

Tim Grierson has written that the zero-resemblance factor among the Mendes quartet is a “good” thing. I don’t know what he’s talking about. Okay, I do know but it’s not enough.

Note: Yes, the comment mechanism briefly stopped working, but now it’s working again. I thought it was repaired last night but not altogether. Kim is working on a solution as we speak.

Who remembers Marc Webb and Allan Loeb‘s The Only Living Boy in New York (Roadside /Amazon, 8.11.17)? Did anyone see it? It opened almost seven years ago (i.e., eight months into the Trump administration), and a few months before the woke plague began to infect the urban liberal bloodstream.

I happened upon my review this morning and was wondering “wow, I wonder if anyone waded into this film….seven years ago is a substantial block of time.”

I found it pretty close to awful. I despised each and every well-heeled, Manhattan-residing character, but that’s a roundabout way of saying I loathed Loeb’s screenplay, which struck me as grating and precious.

Okay, I liked the line about Philadelphia being New York City’s most culturally vibrant neighborhood but that’s about it.

Loeb, remember, wrote the execrable Collateral Beauty, a Will Smith grief-recovery film which was also set in flush NYC environs. That touchy-feely ordeal was enough to condemn Loeb to a five-year sentence on a Southern chain gang, side by side with Paul Newman, George Kennedy and the others. Now he’s earned himself a life term on Devil’s Island with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. The man specializes in manipulative emotional goo.

Callum Turner is Thomas, a somewhat whiny, spectacle-wearing, 20something bore who’s attempting a career as a serious writer and who works as a Rizzoli-like book store to make ends meet. [News flash: No New Yorker can make ends meet in Manhattan on a retail-clerk salary.]

Thomas, who bears an extraordinary resemblance to a Northwestern timber wolf, is the son of Ethan (Pierce Brosnan), a mildly imperious book publisher, and a jittery mom, Judith (Cynthia Nixon).

Thomas is in a not-quite-there relationship with Mimi (Kiersey Clemons) who’s pretty and wise but (be honest) chubby and destined for Queen Latifah-like proportions by the time she hits her mid 30s.

Early on a grizzled 60ish alcoholic writer (Jeff Bridges) appears in Thomas’ Lower East Side apartment building and quickly becomes the kid’s avuncular wisdom-dispenser. Typical Bridges dialogue: “Schnorrrr-roar-urp-urp-schnorrrr-roarr-uhhrr,” etc.

A scene or two later Thomas and Mimi happen to spot Ethan having a cozy romantic dinner with Johanna (Kate Beckinsale), an extra-marital lover. Alarmed but also a tad aroused, Thomas begins stalking Johanna. They immediately start fencing and parrying, and before you know it Thomas is putting the high, hard one, etc.

Why is Johanna open to going stereo with Brosnan’s son? It doesn’t seem to make sense but she goes there regardless, and without telling Brosnan, of course, and so it’s dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick for this mama-san.

And then in Act Three comes a semi-startling piece of news that alters the dynamic between these completely tiresome characters. You don’t want to know, trust me. My main reaction was “what’s with all the secrecy? Is this a Nathaniel Hawthorne novel in which mothers and wives have to hide secrets and atone for decades or at least carry guilt around for their past sins?”

We’ve all known for years that Hunter Biden is “a wrong one”…a bad seed, a rotten apple, a fellow of deplorable character. He needs to go to jail, wear the orange jumpsuit…no getting off easy. His dad obviously needs to throw him under the bus and “walk away”, if only for appearance’s sake.

We all have to pay the bills but…