For years I moaned about not being able to buy a DVD of Carol Reed‘s Outcast of the Islands (1951). Then came a DVD version that didn’t look so hot. Now we have a “a refreshingly new” Kino Lorber Bluray (4.28) that has “depth, superior detail” and a “more layered contrast,” according to DVD Beaver.

I saw Outcast on broadcast TV so many years ago that I can’t remember much, but I have a recollection of something exceptional. If nothing else a serving of atmospheric exotica, it’s about a ne’er do well (Trevor Howard‘s Peter Willems) who doesn’t redeem himself and in fact ends up in a worse place at the end than at the beginning.

The sequence that stands out, memory-fragment-wise, is one in which Robert Morley‘s character (i.e., Elmer Almayer) has been forcibly wrapped into a kind of cocoon-like hammock, and is swinging back and forth with Howard taunting him with a stick or spear of some kind, promising that “I’ll get you next time.”

The story mostly takes place in Indonesia. I don’t remember the particulars. I’ve never read the Conrad book, but I gather it’s a bit grim. Wendy Hiller costars with Morley and Ralph Richardson,. The striking black-and-white cinematography is by Ted Scaife and John Wilcox.

Pauline Kael called Outcast of the Islands “a marvellous film that relatively few people have seen. It’s probably the only movie that has ever attempted to deal in a complex way with the subject of the civilized man’s ambivalence about the savage. It also contains some of the most remarkable sequences ever filmed by Reed; it’s an uneven movie, but with splendid moments throughout.

“Howard is superb as Willems, who makes himself an outcast first through contemptible irresponsibility and through betrayal of those who trust him, and finally and hopelessly when, against his will, he is attracted to the silent, primitive girl, the terrifying Aissa (played by Kerima). Willems is wrong in almost everything he does, but he represents a gesture toward life; his enemy, Almayer (Robert Morley), is so horribly, pathetically stuffy that his family unit (with Wendy Hiller as his wife and Annabel Morley as his child) is absurdly, painfully funny.

“With Ralph Richardson, whose role is possibly ill-conceived, and George Coulouris, Wilfrid Hyde-White and Frederick Valk. The screenplay is by William Fairchild.”

If and when the 2020 Cannes Film Festival happens sometime in July…you tell me. I’m presuming it’ll be under-attended by U.S. journalists, and perhaps across the board. I’m honestly not sure if I can fit it into the schedule at this point, or if I want to.

From Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn: “Reached for comment at his vacation home, festival director Thierry Fremaux was both defiant and practical. ‘If Cannes is canceled, Cannes is canceled,’ he said. ‘We’re all facing a strong situation and we’ll fight until the last minute. If it’s not possible to have Cannes in 2020,[then let’s] rendezvous in 2021. I already can tell you that it will be something to be there all together again. The Mediterranean Sea is waiting for us.'”

Linda Tripp, the rightwing harpy who all but singlehandedly plunged this country into a tawdry, tedious and throughly idiotic impeachment episode in the late ’90s, has died of pancreatic cancer at age 70.

Tripp earned her infamy by surreptitiously recording conversations with Monica Lewinsky, who of course was the White House intern who ignited this ignoble episode by revealing she’d had a non-Biblical affair with President Bill Clinton, and passing them along to her Republican pallies.

Often described as “the most hated woman in America,” Tripp long maintained that she betrayed Lewinsky out of “patriotic duty.”

Wiki excerpt: “Eventually both Clinton and Lewinsky had to appear before a Washington, D.C., grand jury to answer questions, although Clinton appeared via closed circuit television. After the round of interrogation, the jurors offered Lewinsky the chance to offer any last words. “I hate Linda Tripp,” she said.

And I say this having watched Gladiator two or three times during the 2000 Oscar season, and once on Bluray. I’m just done with it. Never again. I can’t tolerate the idea of sitting through Joaquin Phoenix‘s performance as Commodus — demonically boring, evil for the sake of evil, the Shallow Hal of villains.

Russell Crowe was once that thin, of course, but it’s hard to believe this now. When I think of his performance as Maximus, I think of two lines — “Are you not entertained?” and “The harvest, the harvest, the harvest.”

I didn’t care for the battle against the Germanic tribe in the beginning. I didn’t like the herky-jerky process used during the action sequences. I didn’t much care for Connie Neilsen‘s performance, nor Richard Harris‘s or Djimon Honsou‘s. The only things I really admired were (a) the CG reconstruction of the Colisseum, (b) the Colisseum battles, (c) Derek Jacobi and (d) the CG reanimation of the deceased Oliver Reed.

Which Roman epics would I would watch again? Almost any besides Gladiator. Anthony Mann‘s The Fall of the Roman Empire (’64), which tells the same story minus Maximus. Joseph Mankiewicz‘s Julius Caesar (’53). Stanley Kubrick and Kirk Douglas‘s Spartacus (’60). The BBC’s “I, Claudius” series. Any of them.

With Bernie Sanders finally acknowledging what has been patently obvious since Super Tuesday, which was that he had no chance to win the Democratic nomination, “just under 20%” of the Democratic base (including the deeply despised Berniebros) is now free to do whatever. Some will bitterly or half-heartedly vote for Biden in the fall, some will become Trump supporters, some will attempt to spark a third-party movement.

For a very brief period, just after New Hampshire and Nevada and prior to Super Tuesday, victory for the Sanders campaign seemed inevitable. But that phase quickly ended when the Democratic establishment strongly urged (i.e., ordered) Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar to suspend their campaigns. And then Elizabeth Warren bailed in early March.

All along Sanders’ vision and platform have always been the most correct and courageous, but he never had the numbers to defeat Trump.

The passion of the Sanders flock has always been two-pronged — mostly defeating the Democratic center-left establishment and secondarily (and a distant second at that) evicting Donald Trump from the White House. They’re now free to pour all kinds of insurrectionist bile into the social gumbo. For the next few months they will take shot after shot at decent, well-meaning Uncle Joe, who will only serve a single term (everyone understands this) while paving the way for Gavin Newsom or Andrew Cuomo in ’24.

From “Bernie Sanders Only Has Eyes for One Wing of the Democratic Party,” a 4.8.20 N.Y. Times piece by Thomas B. Edsall:

“Earlier this month, Shom Mazumder, a political scientist at Harvard, published a study, ‘Why The Progressive Left Fits So Uncomfortably Within The Democratic Party,’ that analyzed data from a 2019 survey of 2,900 likely Democratic primary voters.

“‘I saw two clear poles emerge within the Democratic Party,’ he writes. “The ‘establishment’ and the ‘progressive left.’ A third group also emerged, and while it’s not as clearly defined as the other two, it has some overlap with the establishment and tends to be more fond of Wall Street, so I’m calling that ‘neoliberals.’

“’Establishment’ voters, in this scheme, means center-left voters who make up just over 60 percent of the total. They stood out as favorably inclined to Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee — in other words, to the Democratic establishment.

“’Progressive left’ Democrats, at just under 20 percent, were most favorable to labor unions, Black Lives Matter, the #MeToo movement, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Democratic Socialists of America. These Democrats viewed business interests — as exemplified by Wall Street — negatively, and they weren’t happy about Joe Manchin, the centrist senator from West Virginia, either.”

The roundish, Newark-born character actor Allen Garfield has passed at age 80. Steadily employed for 35 years or thereabouts, Garfield (briefly known as Allen Goorwitz) peaked in the ’70s — the highlights were Bananas, The Candidate, The Conversation, Nashville, Gable and Lombard and The Brinks Job.

Garfield’s most charismatic performance was as “Klein,” the political advertising guy in Michael Ritchie‘s The Candidate (’72). Second best was Bernie Moran in The Conversation; Vinnie Costa in William Friedkin‘s The Brinks Job is in third place. Others?

The poor man was sidelined after suffering a stroke in ’04.

From Owen Gleiberman‘s 1.31.20 review of “Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind” (HBO, 5.5): “Robert Wagner acknowledges that [he and Natalie] had quarreled earlier in the evening, which is hardly incriminating. But in the documentary, he also tries to explain away tension between himself and [Wood’s Brainstorm costar] Chris Walken — and does so by recounting an exchange the two had about Wood’s career, in which Walken said he thought Wood should be working more, a suggestion Wagner balked at. Wagner felt that Walken needed to mind his own business.

“But then Wagner says something that surprises us: During the argument with Walken, he got so annoyed that he smashed a wine bottle on the table.

“That’s a confession of major anger, one that can’t help but give us pause. The film then mentions the fact that the case was reopened, in 2011, after Dennis Davern, the yacht’s captain, said he’d originally lied to the police; the new scenario he presented claimed that Wagner was responsible for Wood’s death. The law has rejected that scenario, with Wagner, in 2018, having been named as a ‘person of interest’ in the case. Which is not the same thing as a suspect.

“But the 2011 developments raised more doubts about the basic question of what had happened, and the documentary, in not interviewing Dennis Davern (or exploring his version of the events), leaves the audience hanging.

“All of this can seem tasteless and macabre. Yet I think one of the reasons that Natalie Wood’s death still haunts us — and that we almost need a conspiracy to explain it — is that on screen, though perhaps not quite a great actress, she was always such a life force. She made you feel something, because her own feelings were so vivid. She was the movie star as open book, with her own saucy splendor.”

Wood’s best performances (in this order): Inside Daisy Clover, Splendor in the Grass, This Property Is Condemned, Love with the Proper Stranger, West Side Story, Rebel Without a Cause.

From Pete Hammond’s Deadline assessment of award-season prospects if and when the pandemic ebbs (posted on 4.6.20): “As for Telluride, set in an enclosed tiny town in the Colorado Rockies, far fewer visitors attend, but being in such a condensed space over the Labor Day weekend could be problematic not just for attendees (some already have issues because of the altitude), but also the town itself, which is thought to be the first in the country offering to have every single citizen tested for COVID-19.

“Last month, local papers and an ABC report said the city of Telluride was offering tests free to all combined 8,000 residents there and in San Miguel County, of which it is the biggest part. The strategy is similar to one done in Vo Euganeo, a tiny Italian town that managed to test all 3300 of its residents and, according to Live Science, reduced transmission by 90%. It is a wider scale in Telluride, and the tests being used are ELISA tests, which reportedly can find antibodies against coronavirus.

“The testing is being funded by Mei Mei Hu and Louis Reese, co-founders of c19, the subsidiary of United Biomedical that is the company behind the antibody test. They also happen to be residents of Telluride. ‘Our goal is to show what mass testing, social distancing and isolation can do together to stop the spread of infection, and to create a model that could save lives worldwide,’ they told ABC news.

“How this will affect planning of the 47th Telluride Film Festival remains to be seen, but this year for the first time Telluride may not only be known for bringing some of the movie world’s most famous people to town, but also as an incubator for information helping to find a cure for this devastating virus.

“Would they want to take a risk by the influx of Hollywood? Well, it is a resort town, so they are used to interlopers. Interestingly, the Academy has in recent years thrown an annual party for its members, as well as officials and board governors, attending the fest right there in the heart of Telluride, and it is always a wall-to-wall affair. If it can happen again this year, it will mean Oscar season is alive and well and things may be heading to some semblance of normal. We can only hope.”

“We Will Get Through This”…if you say so. Imagine you’re the guy writing this out above West Hollywood. Five words, 20 letters…it can’t be easy to write anything legibly. Not to mention calculating the right height and letter styling and so on. (How big are those letters? A hundred feet tall?) It must take years to hone the skills to a tee. But if I were doing it, I’d write “We’ll Get Through This.” More colloquial. (Posted four days ago on TMZ.)

Home video-wise, Alfonso Cuaron‘s Roma will never look better than it does on Netflix — HD, grain-free, super-detailed. I therefore had no interest in the recently released Criterion Bluray version. But last night I watched a 72-minute making of doc called “Road To Roma“, which was featured on the Criterion disc and is now streaming on Netflix. Lo and behold, my dream of seeing a color version of Cuaron’s masterpiece was finally realized, or at least partially.

Road to Roma is about Cuaron recalling how he pieced together thousands of bits of memory from his early childhood in order to make Roma come alive. The Oscar-winning helmer was incredibly specific and dogged in recreating the 1970 and ’71 world of Mexico City, and this aspect in itself is fascinating.

But after watching and adoring the black-and-white version four or five times in 2018, I began to long for a color version. A voice was telling me that an extra dimensional realism — a certain au natural textural factor — could be savored if it could somehow be seen without the silver monochrome application, which struck everyone as quite beautiful but also (at least in my case) a tiny bit affected — a visual scheme that proclaimed “arthouse!”

Road to Roma allowed me to taste the alternate color version — that’s all I’m saying. And it was very nice.

Yes, I still maintain that the TV screen image tweeted by Monica Castillo looked like a color facsimile. No, not the reflection of amber Christmas lights, but the somber blue-gray tones, which obviously contrasted with the black-and-white version.

Am I allowed to say that Charles Laughton‘s expressionistic The Night of the Hunter (’55) was never all that terrific? It was directed with exceptional feeling and visual command, of course, and it still delivers a perverse, fable-like satire of tyrannical rightwing misogyny — in this instance Robert Mitchum‘s asexual freelance preacher. But it’s not my idea of a great film — it’s more of an atmospheric oddballer.

The most noteworthy aspects are the LOVE and HATE tattoos on Mitchum’s fingers — an image that has, in a sense, outlasted the film itself. That and Mitchum’s smooth baritone as he sings the gospel spiritual “Leaning.”

The Night of the Hunter was an admirable effort by Laughton, for sure, but I’ve never wanted to watch it a second time. Joe and Jane Popcorn can usually smell trouble from ads and trailers, and they avoided this puppy like the plague. So will 2021 audiences, if I know anything about them.

So why remake it? Because the greatness of The Night of the Hunter has been taught in film schools for decades, and to this day there’s no questioning this article of faith. (To this day the same people who worship Laughton’s film also swear by the genius of Douglas Sirk.) It is therefore inconceivable to screenwriter Matt Orton (Operation Finale) and producers Amy Pascal and Peter Gethers that audiences won’t flock to their contemporary remake. Mitchum’s character will of course be transformed into a Trump-worshipping evangelical, etc.

News bulletin: The Night of the Hunter was essentially remade 33 years ago as The Stepfather (’87). Directed by Joseph Ruben with a screenplay by Donald E. Westlake, it was a satiric suspense thriller about a serial killer slash conservative dad in the Ronald Reagan mold (Terry O’Quinn). He marries a widow (Shelley Hack) with a teenage daughter (Jill Schoelen) and all kinds of fierce repression and holy hell break loose.

Set in the 1930s, Laughton’s film is about Mitchum’s Reverend Harry Powell marrying a naive widow (Shelley Winters). His motive is mainly to uncover $10,000 that her late bank-robber husband hid from authorities. Winters’ young children (Billy Chapin, Sally Jane Bruce) can smell a rat from the get-go, and are therefore determined not to tell Powell where the cash has been stashed.