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I recently bought Criterion’s Tunes of Glory Bluray. I felt such holiday excitement as I popped it in, sitting on an ottoman with a cup of warm cider and anticipating some kind of luscious, old-school color bath, and in my favorite aspect ratio of 1.66:1…perfect!

Naturally I expected a “bump” of some kind — some kind of visual upgrade that would make this 1960 Ronald Neame film look like dessert. This is what Blurays are supposed to deliver, after all — versions of well-known films that look a little better than ever before, like they came straight from the lab, all fresh and gleaming. If Neame was somehow sitting beside me I would want him to exclaim, “My God, it’s never looked so good…heaven!”

Alas, the Criterion guys don’t necessarily believe in bumps. They deliver them frequently, but not always. Sometimes they get into one of their pissy moods and decide to throw a change-up.

Within five or ten minutes of watching their Tunes of Glory Bluray, I knew I’d been burned.

Sometimes Arthur Ibbetson‘s cinematography would look sufficient or, as some say, “good enough”; at other times it looked vaguely washed out and in one or two portions almost absurdly grainy. And it certainly lacked any semblance of what I would call sharpness.

Most of the time I felt as if I was watching a 16mm print bring projected onto somebody’s living room wall.

If you want to adopt a go-along attitude you could say it looks fine for the most part. There’s nothing “wrong” with the appearance of this 59 year-old British film except for the fact that it looks completely unexceptional and therefore hugely disappointing.

I had the same reaction to Criterion’s Rosemary’s Baby Bluray…a completely first-rate, professional-grade snooze.

From Gary Tooze’s recently posted DVD Beaver review: “It shifts quite dramatically from the weak SD but never looks crisp or glossy, maintaining the film’s grit and grain textures to the significantly higher degree offered by the HD resolution. There is an inherent softness and lack of depth that can give the perception of losing detail — it looks far more film-like in motion. I do see that it is slightly cropped on both side edges of the frame as compared to the old DVD. Overall the digital presentation gains significantly on the 4K restored Bluray.”

HE response: It’s fine but underwhelming…be honest! A first-rate transfer that will put you to sleep.

Criterion’s Tunes of Glory Bluray was restored in 2018 by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Film Archive and The Film Foundation in collaboration with Janus Films and The Museum of Modern Art. Restoration funding provided by George Lucas Family Foundation. The 35mm Eastman Color original camera negative and 35mm optical track positive are the sources of this digital restoration. 4K Scanning and Image Restoration by FotoKem Audio Restoration by Audio Mechanics.

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Everyone is hot to see The Many Saints of Newark (Warner Bros., 9.25.20), otherwise known as the Sopranos prequel. It won’t open for another nine months, but it’s been research-screened a couple of times. It’s no run-of-the-mill crime drama, and I’m guessing it’ll play at one or more of the three major fall film festivals (Venice, Telluride, Toronto) of 2020. The Toronto gathering ends on 9.20 — Many Saints opens five days later.

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Industry pally to HE: “When is HE going to post a think-piece about Kumail Nanjiani‘s much-buzzed-about body transformation for Marvel’s Eternals? As the literal geiger counter of Hollywood’s weight gain/loss neuroses, I feel you have a moral obligation to weigh in here. I myself scarcely know what to think about these things until I know where HE stands.”

HE to industry pally: “HE is more than impressed by Kumail’s transformation. I’m actually finding this photo a little scary. I mean, you could almost cast him as some kind of fierce-as-fuck guy in a mercenary film. The last time I spoke with Kumail he looked like his usual self. When and if he does stand-up at the Comedy Store will people be able to laugh? There’s something deeply unfunny about those pecs. Nonetheless, HE approves.”

Nanjiani: “I never thought I’d be one of those people who would post a thirsty shirtless photo, but I’ve worked way too hard for way too long.”

14 days hence begins the third decade of the 21st Century — the 2020s. Herewith my list of the top 15 films of the last decade (starting in 2010) as well as my year-by-year tallies, working backwards — 84 films in all:

TOP FIFTEEN OF THE LAST DECADE: Manchester By The Sea, A Separation, The Social Network, Zero Dark Thirty, The Irishman, Call Me By Your Name, Son of Saul, The Wolf of Wall Street, Leviathan, Joker, The Square, Moneyball, The Lighthouse, 12 Years A Slave, Dunkirk.

Best of 2019: The Irishman, Joker, Les Miserables, The Lighthouse, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, 1917, Marriage Story, Bombshell, Parasite, The Farewell (10).

Best of 2018: Roma, Green Book, First Reformed, Cold War, Hereditary, Capernaum, Vice, Happy As Lazzaro, Filmworker, First Man, Widows, Sicario — Day of the Soldado. (12).

Best of 2017: Call Me By Your Name, Dunkirk, Lady Bird, The Square, War For The Planet of the Apes, mother!, The Florida Project. (7)

Best of 2016: Manchester By The Sea, A Bigger Splash, La La Land, The Witch, Eye in the Sky, The Confirmation, The Invitation. (6)

Best of 2015: Spotlight, The Revenant; Mad Max: Fury Road; Beasts of No Nation; Love & Mercy, Son of Saul; Brooklyn; Carol, Everest, Ant-Man; The Big Short. (10)

Best of 2014: Birdman, Citizen Four, Leviathan, Gone Girl, Boyhood, Locke, Wild Tales. (7)

Best of 2013: The Wolf of Wall Street, 12 Years A Slave, Inside Llewyn Davis, Her, Dallas Buyers Club, Before Midnight, The Past, Frances Ha (8).

Best of 2012: Zero Dark Thirty, Silver Linings Playbook, Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Barbara, The Grey, Moonrise Kingdom (7).

Best of 2011 (ditto): A Separation, Moneyball, Drive, Contagion, X-Men: First Class, Attack the Block (6).

Best of 2010: The Social Network, The Fighter, Black Swan, Inside Job, Let Me In, A Prophet, Animal Kingdom, Rabbit Hole, The Tillman Story, Winter’s Bone (10).

Updated on 12.18, 9:15 am: There have been seven Star Wars films since The Empire Strikes Back, which opened on 5.21.80. For 39 years I’ve been hoping for another that would be as good. None of them have made the grade, and that includes Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which I saw yesterday afternoon.

I was talking with a critic friend a few hours later, and he said something I more or less agreed with. He said “it’s okay.” That’s a fair way of putting it. And not a put-down.

I didn’t mind the classic fan-friendly stuff (echoes and replays of A New Hope, Empire and Return of the Jedi). There’s a whole lot of this in the second half, but the first half…yeesh. Director J.J. Abrams pushes the action along in such a crazy-ass, pell-mell, Mexican jumping bean way I had a headache within minutes.

Then again Rise is a somewhat better film than Abrams’ The Force Awakens. Or the last 45 to 50 minutes are, at least.

But that first hour is rough. “I don’t think I can take this,” I was muttering to myself. “If it doesn’t slow down I might have to…I don’t know, hit the lobby, walk around, check my phone messages.” But I manned up and toughed it out.

The Rise of Skywalker finally slowed down and became more or less coherent around…oh, the 75-minute mark, somewhere around there.

I took some notes after it ended and sent them to a friend. I won’t spoil anything important, I promise.

“There was a 50something fanboy sitting behind me going ‘aahwwww’ when anything the least bit endearing happened. Or “hah-HAH!” or “whoo-whoo!” when anything the least bit exciting happened.  He wouldn’t stop. It was all I could do to keep myself from turning around and giving him my death-ray look.

“J.J. levitated the [redacted] out of the water and used the exact same John Williams music…great!

“And he re-did the Return of the Jedi finale on the forest planet of Endor with love, joy, hugs and great relief. And he included a lesbian couple kissing and hugging. (A real quickie.) But he also brought back [redacted]!  I thought I’d seen the last of those guys. 

“And I loved returning to a certain desert-like planet…

“I still don’t get why Kylo Ren has to wear a face-shield helmet. Darth Vader did so because his face was disfigured; Ren has a huge schnozz but otherwise has nothing to mitigate.

“Who’s the overweight bearded guy who plays one of the rebel pilots?” It turns out he’s Greg Grunberg.

“Emperor Palpatine was thrown into a black void by Darth Vader at the end of Return of the Jedi. Does anybody ever stay dead in these films? Back in the early ’80s dead Star Wars characters (such as Obi Wan Kenobi) would return as ghostly see-through figures with ice-blue lines around their edges. This happens again in The Rise of Skywalker but that’s all I can say.

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HE to NYC journos (some at early afternoon Cats screening, two who’ve already seen it): “What’s the likely aggregate numerical opinion of Cats going to be? Straight from the shoulder….most people are likely to give it a 9, an 8.5, a 7, a 6…what?”

Journo #1 “I’ll say 45% on Rotten Tomatoes unless expectations going in are lower than expected.”

Journo #2: “Saw it last night. It won’t be a high number.”

Journo #3: “I’m here at 1 pm screening where they have real people ‘recruited ny marketing firms.’ And when I asked a prominent independent publicist, she said “I saw it last night…it’s the play.”

Journo #1: “I’m here too. Not sure why they need seat-fillers who probably will tweet about the movie while we can’t.”

Journo #4: “I guess you are all at Cats? Very good performances, but it’s an odd show. It was odd on Broadway. There is no plot, which is why Japanese audiences flock to it. They loved the music and the costumes. There is a slight plot line which makes no sense. Jennifer Hudson is amazing. Judi Dench is lovely. RT 75%.”

Journo #5: “I have a long-standing record of never having seen Cats. I don’t intend to break that now.”

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Based on the bees-in-the-brain reactions to last night’s premiere of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (or at least the first half of it), the word is that J.J. Abrams hasn’t so much dumbed it down as fanned it down — i.e., “course-corrected” some of Rian Johnson’s Last Jedi inclinations in order to appease old-school loyalists.

“I think approaching any creative process with [making fandoms happy] would be a mistake that would lead to probably the exact opposite result,” Johnson said in 12.13 Radio.com interview. “What I’m aiming for every time I sit down in a theater is to have the experience [I had] with The Empire Strikes Back.

“I want to be shocked, I want to be surprised, I want to be thrown off-guard, I want to have things recontextualized…I want to be challenged as a fan when I sit down in the theater.”

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What I’m absorbing from this new Maverick: Top Gun teaser is Tom Cruise‘s Maverick doing loop-dee-loops in the manner of Han Solo flying the Millennium Falcon…a lot of wild-ass, bordering-on-reckless stuff. Plus the usual testosterone shenanigans, some of which alarms Jon Hamm‘s three-star admiral. Plus confirmation that Jennifer Connelly‘s “single mother running a bar near the Naval base” is in fact an age-appropriate romantic partner for Maverick. And yaddah yaddah.

There’s a brief shot of a flag-draped coffin so who buys it? My money’s on either Miles Teller‘s “Rooster” Bradshaw or Monica Barbaro‘s “Phoenix”.

Boilerplate: “When Maverick finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission, he encounters the chip-off-the-old-block son of Maverick’s late friend ‘Goose’ Bradshaw. Facing an uncertain future and confronting the ghosts of his past, Maverick is drawn into a confrontation with his own deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who will fly it.”

Posted on 7.18.19: “San Diego-based fighter pilots!….the aura of studly military rock stars, coping with buried anger and the burden of expectations, brusque and strapping and throwing their heads back in laughter while playing piano in a honky tonk.

“And the women who both love and compete with them. With the big climactic test of skill and character looming. And so on.

“I haven’t read the script (co-authored by Peter Craig, Justin Marks, Christopher McQuarrie and Eric Warren Singer) but I want a scene in which Cruise tells Connelly that Kelly McGillis‘ Charlie Blackwood left him for another woman, and then (beat, beat) Connelly tells Cruise, ‘Yeah, I know…it was me.’ Or: ‘I’m sorry, that’s tough. (beat) She left me too.’

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Robert De Niro to N.Y. Times‘ David Marchese: “This actor can’t remember lines, so he can’t get a job. A director he knows runs into him at the gas station where he’s working. The director says, ‘I have a play that in the third act, what you do is go and say, ‘Hark, I hear the cannons roar.’ Can I count on you to do that?” The actor says he’ll do it. He goes and rehearses, rehearses, rehearses. ‘Hark, I hear the cannons roar. Hark, I hear the cannons roar.’ On the day of the play, the third act comes and the actor runs out onstage. The cannon goes BOOM! and the actor goes, ‘The fuck was that?!'”

Criterion has apparently devised a new pricing and access strategy. Until recently there were only two ways to watch Criterion titles — buy the Bluray or DVD versions or stream the films on the Criterion Channel. Or so I’ve gathered.

Criterion physical media tends to be priced higher than average, of course. Their recently released Tunes of Glory Bluray, for example, costs $31.96 and the DVD sticker is $23.96.

But today I happened to notice that the same HD Criterion-stamped Tunes of Glory is available for purchase or rental on Amazon. You can buy permanent access for $14.99, or rent a limited viewing window for 3.99.

To my knowledge new Criterion titles being buyable or rentable on Amazon only days after the street date is a new thing. I tried double-checking this with Criterion p.r. rep Courtney Ott — zip.

A new Criterion gold-standard Bluray comes out, and you’re keen to see it. Do you shell out $32 (except during Barnes and Noble sale weekends) or pay $3.99 for an HD streaming version that probably won’t look substantially different than the physical media version? Or, if you want to watch it three or four times over the next few years, do you pay $14.99?

It’s time to rectify the 1959 Oscars once and for all. Posthumously, of course, but better late than never. The winners of record will still retain their places in history, of course, but 60 years have passed and new perspectives have emerged, and it’s time to ratify this.

Charlton Heston gave a first-rate performance in Ben-Hur, and rode that film’s political coattails to win a Best Actor Oscar. But who watches that 1959 Biblical epic today to savor Heston’s emoting? The film is admired, justly, for the sea battle and chariot race sequences, for Robert Surtees‘ cinematography, and for the huge expensive sets. But HE has another Best Actor winner in mind.

Starting from the top…

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I’ve asked before if this or that classic film of the ’60s, ’70s or ’80s could be remade today. Most of the time the answer is “no, it probably couldn’t be.” Because the stories are too dated or present-day culture might find the premise unwelcome or out of bounds. And so it may be that John Boorman‘s Deliverance (’72), released 47 and 1/2 years ago, will never be remade. It’s a film that was right…hell, perfect for its time, but would probably not be right for ours. Sometimes it’s better to leave well enough alone.

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