Closing remark: “It shouldn’t be this scary to talk about anything. It’s made my job incredibly difficult and to be honest with you, I’m getting sick of talking to a crowd like this. I love you to death and I thank you for your support, and I hope they don’t take anything away from me. Whoever ‘they’ are.”

I’ve been complaining about all-but-unintelligible movie dialogue for several years now, and the almost uniform response from the HE commentariat has been that it’s mostly my fault — my hearing isn’t what it used to be so I need to get a hearing aid and blah-dee-blah.

That may be true to some extent but movie dialogue has nonetheless been increasingly hard to understand over the last decade or so, and it’s absolutely not entirely my fault.

According to Slashfilm’s Ben Pearson and an absolutely historic article that I was too distracted to read until today, a good amount of the blame is on actors, mixing boards, theatre sound systems, Chris Nolan, etc.

Please accept my humble, bended-knee apology for overlooking Pearson’s piece, titled “Here’s Why Movie Dialogue Has Gotten More Difficult To Understand.”

And please read it, and then watch the video.

Pearson says the chief culprits are (a) Chris Nolan, who has made a fetish out of mixing his films so you can barely hear the dialogue, (b) self-conscious actors who deliver “soft, mumbling, under-their-breath delivery of some lines,” (c) a lack of respect for sound recording during principal photography, (d) too many digital tracks resulting in de-prioritizing dialogue, (e) mixing for cinemas vs. mixing for streaming.

One thing Pearson doesn’t mention is vocal-fry murmur, which Millennial and Zoomer actresses began to project back in the early teens. I first wrote about the vocal-fry plague eight years ago.

All I know is that I’m really looking forward to watching Tar at home with subtitles — something tells me this will be transformative.

…to come out of The Banshees of Inisherin will be Kerry Condon‘s Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Otherwise it’s an Irish death march — a well-composed, essentially nihilistic film about a self-destructive island of lost souls.

I haven’t seen the forthcoming 4K Casablanca Bluray (WHE, 11.8) but to go by the DVD Beaver screen captures it just looks darker, which is what 4K versions of classic films often provide…inkier, buried in shadow.

Compare the stills of the 4K version vs. the old 2007 Bluray — details you could see with the 2007 Bluray (which is still my favorite) you can’t see as clearly on the 4K. How is that an improvement?

Were the techs who created this inky Casablanca inspired by Criterion’s 2016 Bluray of Only Angels Have Wings? — one of the most bizarre and totally needless experiments in pointless shadow baths? 

Home Theatre Forum‘s Robert Harris, posted on 11.4.22: “Casablanca looks fine in 4k. Blacks may be a bit richer than the previous Bluray, but beyond that I’m not seeing a great deal of difference. I’m seeing some constantly shifting grain patterns, which I can understand as much of the film is taken from dupes.

“Extremely fine in some facial close-ups and medium shots, far more normal in exterior long shots and other bits of the film. The management is obvious, but not a problem.

“If one owns [an earlier 1080p] Bluray version, is there enough of a 4k bump to purchase the film again? I’m not seeing it.”

My favorite is still the good old DNR’d 2007 Bluray. Perfect — I love it like family. I hated the 2012 70th anniversary Bluray, which covered Casablanca in billions upon billions of grain mosquitoes…infinite swarms swirling around the heads and inhaled into the lungs of poor Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Dooley Wilson, etc. Ghastly.

As to the 4K, why would anybody want to watch a Casablanca that’s been shadowed and darkened all to hell? Where is the upside in that? 4K treatments almost always smother with unneccessary inky darkness that often obscures detail.

The 2007 Casablanca Bluray is good enough for me. It’s my little baby, my teddy bear, my blue blanky.

Question: Why does the 4K Bluray jacket use a shot of younger Bogart (taken in the mid to late 30s) wearing a black tuxedo, which his somewhat older character, Richard Blaine, doesn’t wear in Casablanca?  Why?  What kind of perverse or diseased mind says “yeah, that’s fine — Bogart looks a few years younger but so what?  And who cares about the black tux?”. 

The only time I’ve really fallen head-over-heels for Barbra Streisand was when I saw her in Funny Girl. She really pours it out in that William Wyler film, and I just melted in the onwash of all that heart and soul.

But honestly? The main reason I was so susceptible to Barbra’s Fanny Brice was because I was tripping on Orange Wedge. That’s the truth of it — I saw and felt her like no other time in my life because of the soul-stirring power of lysergic acid diethylamide.

Which Streisand performances did the trick when I wasn’t tripping my brains out? K-K-K-K-Katie Morosky in The Way We Were I(’73), Cheryl Gibbons in All Night Long (’81) and Dr. Susan Loewenstein in The Prince of Tides (’91).

On 5.24.63 the 21-year-old Streisand met JFK after performing at the annual White House press dinner. (It happened at Washington’s Sheraton Park Hotel.) JFK: “You have a beautiful voice. How long have you been singing?’ Streisand: “As long as you’ve been President.”

In fact Streisand had begun professionally singing in 1960, first at the Lion, a Manhattan gay nightclub on West Ninth Street, and then in another Greenwich Village club, Bon Soir (40 West 8th Street).

Streisand said later that “I never get autographs for myself, but my mother had asked me to get [President Kennedy’s]. He signed a card for me and I said, ‘You’re a doll.’”

On or about 11.23.15 Barbra Streisand was awarded the 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama at the White House. At the 15-second mark Streisand’s facial expression goes “what?” when the guy reading a few salutory words refers to her career having lasted “six decades.”

At that point Streisand’s career had been going strong for just under five and a half decades, although she didn’t really get rolling until ’62-’63.

RRR is flamboyant garbage. Ludicrous, primitive Telugu crap. Cruel British paleskin colonists are ridiculous. Moronic liberation mythology. Over-done, over-baked, horribly acted and three hours long. Pic has its heart in the right place, and believes in ridiculous extremes and heroic absurdities…it spits on reality & naturalism, celebrates cartoon-level tropes…if only I were four or five years old! Alas, I’m a bit older. Alas, I have certain minimal standards.

Okay, the musical dance sequence at the British party (Brits vs. Browns) is approvable. Reminded me of that classic tribe-vs.-tribe dance sequence from Michael Kidd’s Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

Ram Charan is cool in a fierce, hardcore way. But N.T. Rama Rao Jr. is impossible, not to mention heavy-set.

Friendo: “Of course the Brits are ridiculous. And so is the imagery and use of music. It’s an absurdist comedy.”

HE to friendo: If you say so.

My fourth viewing of Tar will be with subtitles (Bluray or streaming), which will probably help enormously.

Thought #1: Since Avatar opened in late ’09 or 13 years ago, I’ve regarded it as a very filling, four-course meal — a complete, nourishing and fulfilling grand slam in all respects. And so I’ve never understood the need or the hunger, even, for any Avatar sequels. Other than the fact that they would make money, of course, but shouldn’t films of any kind (sequels or stand-alones) be willed into existence for reasons other than the mere earning of shekels?

Thought #2: I’m not all that enthused, frankly, about a film in which significant portions take place under waiter, given my own personal inability to breathe in that environment. I’m not a fish and I don’t have gills and the Navi aren’t wearing air tanks or mouthpieces so…

Thought #3: My understanding is that the Navi are, like humans, oxygen-breathing beings with lungs. So how do they manage to stay underwater for long periods of time with relative ease, as if they’re naturally aquatic? Director-writer James Cameron has an answer, of course, but right I’m scratching my head.

[Originally posted on 2.17.15.] There was a period between my 20th and 21st birthday when I had no job or goals or academic engagement…nothing. I was in my Bhagavad Gita mystical phase, no fooling, except the constant urge to party and frolic and basically pursue the spiritual pretty much dominated everything. Partying and then recovering the next day so I could party again the next night…well, there was actually more to it than just that.

It’s not that I didn’t try to have a kind of “life.” I would land a job I hated and then lose that job. I read the New York Times every day but I ingested a lot of substances and did a lot of sleeping and day-dreaming. I dabbled as a dealer of pot and hallucinogens. Occasional tripping, hitchhiking, chasing girls, wherever the day took me…bars, parties, music and especially (this was huge) lying totally ripped on a floor with two smallish Marantz speakers on either side of my head.

At some point my parents decided to strongly communicate their disfavor. They wanted me to understand that this lifestyle had nowhere to go but down so they kicked me out of their comfortable Cape Cod-style home in Wilton, Connecticut. I would crash here and there but occasionally I’d have nowhere to go. So I’d show up at the Cape Cod around midnight or 1 am and throw pebbles at my sister Laura’s window. To keep me out every night my father would lock the garage basement door plus the dining-room door that led to the basement stairs, so I needed Laura to let me in. After a couple of taps she’d come to the window and then meet me downstairs. I remember I had to raise the sliding garage doors one inch at a time so as to not make any noise. Laura and I would tiptoe upstairs in pitch black and I’d sleep inside the closet in my room. My parents both worked during the day and were gone by 9 am, so I’d come down around 10 am or so and get some breakfast, etc.

I forget how many times this happened but I’d say at least 15 or 20. Laura was there for me every time. I’m not saying she acted in some extraordinary fashion but she did the good, kind thing.

Laura’s schizophrenia became pretty aggravated around then, and the truth is that we didn’t have very much to say to each other through the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. She had a much higher IQ than I (or so I was told) but she was pretty much off the rails. Laura had a hard life. I took her to Italy (San Donato, Rome) with me in ’03 — that was pretty much the summit of our adult bonding. Laura died of cancer in April of 2008, and it just hit me this morning that I never told her how extra double thankful I was for all those times she gave me the gift of a warm, snug sleep on the floor of my bedroom closet. If she could read this or perhaps hear me on some level…

Chance Browne painting of Seir Hill Road (where I spent my high school years) in Wilton, CT. — my parents’ Cape Cod home (45 Seir Hill) was just down the road.

Panzano, Italy — May 2017.

Rome, last May.

There are three kinds of excellent horror film endings, but they all put the chill in and stay there after the closing credits.

One, those that add something totally unexpected at the very end, a la Carrie White‘s bloody hand poking through the burnt embers and grabbing Amy Irving in Carrie.

Two, those that double down by adding a dash of surreal, rule-breaking creepitude a la Anthony Perkins‘ demonic grin blending with his mother’s rotted skull in Psycho.

And three, those that allude to real-world concerns or social tremors, as in The Thing From Another World when a news reporter warns the world to “watch the skies…keep looking, keep watching the skies“, the notion being that James Arness‘s Mr. Clean is actually out there in some form.

What late 20th Century or 21st Century horror films deliver one of these variations?