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It will be interesting to watch the forthcoming 4K UHD of Alfred Hitchchcock‘s The Man Who Knew Too Much (’55), which was shot by Robert Burks in VistaVision. But not the others.

If you’re talking about a 4K UHD remastered Hitchcock film that would really get people excited, the most desired would be North by Northwest (’59). The last Bluray upgrade happened in ‘07. Overdue for 4K. Way.

Hitchcock and Burks shot five films in VisaVision: To Catch a Thief, The Trouble with Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo and North by Northwest.

I’ve just been told that if I want to potentially buffer my image as a moderate-minded fellow and not sink any deeper into the sinkhole of suspected racism, I need to ease up on my tortured reactions to Killers of the Flower Moon. In short, get with the program or you’ll be bitch-slapped and condemned as Hollywood’s David Duke.

And as a bonus, I’ve been told, while I’m carving up Killers of the Flower Moon, I’ll be hurting The Holdovers in the bargain!

What the fuck are these benign buzzards and gargoyles talking about? What have my divided reactions to a well-produced but clearly problematic, difficult-to-sit-through-a-second-time film about a century-old case of native Oklahoma genocide…how does that make me a racist?

Does everyone understand what woke-fingered demons these guys are? If they don’t like your opinions they’ll throw “R” spears at you in order to give you pause or perhaps even kill you outright. This is the stinking, steaming social cauldron in which we live.

It started with an assessment of my piece on Armond White’s negative review of Scorsese’s film.

HOOVES AND POINTED TAIL: “The fact that Armond’s a Black man gives you some welcome cover here, of course. You must realize, however, that he is also a Black Trump supporter. Which places him pretty close to that guy in Sam Fuller‘s Shock Corridor. You know, the Black inmate who put on Klan robes.”

HE: “Armond’s Trump thing is insane.”

HOOVES AND POINTED TAIL: “The Trump thing is who he is; it seeps into everything he writes. He owns it. So do what you will. You’re gonna try to kill this movie for the next…God, three or four months. But you won’t be able to. And The Holdovers will suffer as a result, because you’re gonna look so much like David Duke while you stomp on Scorsese that people won’t trust your positive recommendations. It’s a shame. And I know you don’t wanna hear this but it’s the truth.”

HE: “‘David Duke’? Maybe in the politically correct, culturally intimidated film elite wussy world that you and others live in, but otherwise that’s ridiculous and flat-out offensive. That’s bad comedy. My mixed feelings about Killers of the Flower Moon are about leaden pacing and poor dramaturgy, and my issues with Lily Gladstone…look, she’s a fine actress and is better-than-decent in the film but everyone knows she doesn’t really deliver Oscar-level chops, and that her handlers are using her identity as a passport to Best Actress contention.”

HOOVES AND POINTED TAIL: “As you have to be aware by now, some folks already see you that way, whether you think it’s ridiculous or not. Just keep putting the pedal to the metal and watch the pushback you get. Consider this observation a friendly word of caution.”

HE: “‘Some folks already see me that way’? Is there any chance these folks are descendants of ’50s-era Hollywood predators who warned Carl Foreman, Dalton Trumbo and Jules Dassin to modify their HUAC testimony, give their industry profile a buff-and-polish and re-think their political persuasions? We’re living in a wicked, wicked world, man….and deep down the truly foul players know who they are. I spit on their insinuations.”

Late yesterday afternoon I sat through my second viewing of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. (My first exposure was on 5.20.23 at the Salle Debussy, or five months ago.) It happened at Westport’s AMC Royale 6, Theatre #3 at 4 pm.

The screen illumination was decidedly dim (in Cannes the brightness levels seemed well above the SMPTE standard of 14 or 15 foot lamberts) and so the whole thing felt needlessly shrouded and vaguely downish…dark rainclouds overhead.

Plus there were only four of us in the theatre — Jody and myself plus a 60ish couple in the rear.

I knew I would be experiencing a kind of waiting, stuck-in-the-Oklahoma-mud gaslighting hell for the first two hours. For it’s not just Lily Gladstone being monotonously lied to by Robert DeNiro’s incessantly drawling “King” Hale and his dumbfuck nephew, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart — it was me also…me, Jeffrey Wells, sprawled in my handicapped seat for extra legroom…I had to sit through all that gaslighting bullshit…lying, lying, “ahh feel fer yew in your tahhm of grief”…will you shut the fuck up already, Bobby?

I flinched with every DeNiro sighting. Jesus, here it comes again…”we wull leave no stone unturned in order to fahhnd these killers…”

And then finally Jesse Plemons (as FBI investigator Tom White) shows up at the two-hour mark, and things start to pick up. But even then…

For one thing there’s no real Lily / Mollie catharsis at the end. No admonishments, no barking, no “how dare you?”

Even during her final scene with Leo / Ernest, after White has doubtless told her the full sordid truth about Leo’s conspiratorial complicity in the Osage murder spree as well as her own poisoning, Lily / Mollie can’t bring herself to slap or even scold that hayseed.

Instead she embraces Leo / Ernest and then her right palm gently touches the side of his face. Lily’s pained expression says, “I feel mostly pity in my heart for you, my poor dumb beef-bod yokel. You’re the lamb who went astray and saw to the deaths of my family and friends…poor little stupid baby.”

Not very dramatically satisfying, Lily, Leo and Marty!

Below is a screen capture from Martin Scorsese‘s 2004 American Express commercial. This is the Marty I’ve adored for decades as opposed to the woke Marty who decided he couldn’t make a white guy movie when he started work on Killers of the Flower Moon. This recent Marty incarnation I don’t fully relate to. The “I only have eyes for the pain of the Osage” Marty is like a Marty who’s been taken over by seed pods from Don Siegel‘s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It looks like him and talks like him, but it isn’t him…it’s someone else.

And now comes the revelation that Leo did it…Leo talked Marty into dropping the “birth of the FBI” angle and giving Killers a woke makeover.

Blunt message: “You’re going broke, You spend more than you make.”

Posted on 10.13.23:

The Best Supporting Actress buzz for Penelope Cruz‘s Ferrari performance — the bitter, burning, marginalized-but-nonetheless-tough-as-nails wife of Enzo Ferrari, holding his fate and that of the car company itself in her hands — started roughly six weeks ago at the Venice Film Festival, and here I am adding a log to the fire.

Cruz and the bewigged and paunchy Adam Driver, who portrays the nearly 60-year-old Ferrari with a current of earnest conviction, perform a dining-room tabletop sex scene that out-points, I feel, the last historic milestone in this realm — the Jack Nicholson-Jessica Lange table-top in Bob Rafelson‘s The Postman Always Rings Twice (’81).

The difference is that the Cruz-Driver sex is joyful and eruptive and therapeutic while the Nicholson-Lange is merely hot and hungry.

Due respect to The Eyes of Tammy Fae‘s Jessica Chastain, but there’s no question that Cruz’s bravura performance in Pedro Almodovar‘s Parallel Mothers (’21) should have won the Best Actress Oscar — everyone understands that. So the Ferrari nomination will likely result in Cruz being regarded as the front-runner — one of those “the Academy apologizes buut this will make things right” deals.

Jordan Ruimy‘s Best Films of Martin Scorsese poll popped yesterday. Ruimy tallied the preferences of 114 critics, and the top three — no surprise — are Goodfellas, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. I’m sorry but those are vaguely boring, right-down-the-middle choices. The Des Moines Realtors Association would’ve picked these.

HE’s top three are Raging Bull, The Wolf of Wall Street and The Last Temptation of Christ.

The two least admired Scorsese films on Ruimy’s list are Boxcar Bertha and Who’s That Knocking On My Door?, which got no votes.

The voted-upon Scorsese flicks with the lowest counts are The Color of Money, New York, New York and The Aviator, which snagged one vote each. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Shutter island and Gangs of New York got two votes each. Cape Fear got 3, Kundun, 4 and Silence, 7.

HE’s three least favorite Scorsese flicks are Kundun, Shutter Island and The Aviator.

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Around the 57-minute mark of Stanley Kubrick‘s Spartacus, there’s a magnificent matte painting shot of Rome. What makes it special isn’t just the painting of the ancient city by Peter Ellenshaw, but the filmed inserts of gesturing extras dressed in Roman garb.

According to IndexFX, “All but one of the Spartacus matte paintings were done at Universal’s matte painting department under the supervision of Russell Lawson.

“But for the establishing shot showing a view of Rome, Kubrick requested that the painting be done by Ellenshaw, who at that time was the head of matte painting at Disney Studios.”

Here’s an Academy Museum site focused oh the Ellenshaw painting.

Question: What are some other old-school matte paintings blended with live action…ones that really stand out, I mean?

Among many others I recently participated in Scott Feinberg’s “The 100 Greatest Film Books of All Time” survey, the results of which popped in The Hollywood Reporter today (10.12).

What’s the next great topic for a Hollywood expose or tell-all? Six years ago I suggested a book called “Super-Vomit: How Hollywood Infantiles (i.e., Devotees of Comic Books and Video Games) Degraded Theatrical and All But Ruined The Greatest Modern Art Form“?

Here’s another idea — a recent-history book one about how censorious, ultra-sensitive wokesters all but suffocated the film business during the woke terror era (2016 to present)?

Here are the books I put on my top-25 Feinberg list:

(1) Sam Wasson’s “The Big Goodbye” (making of Chinatown book)

(2) Stephen Bach‘s “Final Cut: Dreams and Disasters in the Making of Heaven’s Gate”

(4) Mark Harris‘s “Pictures at a Revolution”

(5) John Gregory Dunne‘s “The Studio”

(6) Leo Braudy‘s “The World in a Frame”

(7) Thomas Schatz‘s “The Genius of the System”

(8) David McClintick‘s “Indecent Exposure”

(9) Otto Freidrich‘s “City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s“,

(10) Julie Salamon‘s “The Devil’s Candy,”

(11) Jack Brodsky and Nathan Weiss‘s “The Cleopatra Papers”

(12) David Thomson‘s “Suspects“ + “The Whole Equation

(13) William Goldman‘s “Which Lie Did I Tell?”

(14) Peter Biskind‘s “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” and “Down and Dirty Pictures.”

(15) Charles Fleming‘s “High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess,”

(16) William Goldman‘s “Adventures in the Screen Trade”,

(17) the audio version of Robert Evans‘ “The Kid Stays in the Picture”,

(18) James B. Stewart‘s “Disney War“

(19) Peter Biskind‘s “Seeing is Believing”

(20) Thomas Doherty‘s “Hollywood’s Censor” (the book about Joe Breen)

(21) Jake Ebert and Terry Illiot‘s “My Indecision Is Final”

(22) Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters‘ “Hit and Run: How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood“,

(23) Bruce Wagner‘s “Force Majeure“,

(24) David Thomson‘s “Warren Beatty and Desert Eyes: A Life and a Story“

(25) Nathaniel West‘s “The Day of the Locust”

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Lawmen: Bass Reeves is a new western series (Paramount +, 11.5) about a tough, well-respected lawman in the Arkansas and Oklahoma Indian territories during the post-Civil War Years.

The series was created by showrunner Chad Feehan, executive produced by Taylor Sheridan, and stars David Oyelowo (who also produced). Costarring Dennis Quaid, Forrest Goodluck, Lauren E. Banks, Barry Pepper, Grantham Coleman, Demi Singleton.

I don’t know how many episodes are in store but the writers won’t need to invent much as Reeves lived quite a life. The trailer makes it feel Deadwood-y.

What I haven’t figured is why the first word in the title is Lawmen.

Wiki excerpt: “Reeves worked for 32 years as a federal peace officer in the Indian Territory, brought in some of the most dangerous fugitives of the time, and was never wounded despite having his hat and belt shot off on separate occasions.

“In addition to being a marksman with a rifle and revolver, Reeves developed superior detective skills during his long career. When he retired in 1907, Reeves had on his record thousands of arrests of felons, some accounts claiming over 3000. According to his obituary, he killed 14 outlaws to defend his life.”

Reeves was portrayed by Delroy Lindo in The Harder They Fall (’21).