Repeated: Nadine Labaki‘s Capernaum (Sony Pictures Classics, 12.14) is about a 12 year-old Lebanese kid (and a small-framed one at that, making him look eight or nine) going through hard-knocks destitution on the streets of Beirut.

Does it get you emotionally to watch a raw verite depiction of a parent-less, penniless kid struggle to survive while trying to take care of an infant boy in diapers? Of course it does, but I didn’t see Capernaum as manipulative because I didn’t sense any lying or exaggerating on the part of Labaki, the kid (Zain Al-Rafeea), the infant or any of the supporting characters.

What other way could a director possibly depict extreme poverty except in a plain, matter-of-fact way?

Capernaum isn’t really about a child who files a lawsuit against his parents for giving him birth, as the point is never vigorously or extensively argued in a courtroom setting. It is, however, a deeply affecting hard-knocks, street-urchin survival tale in the vein of Pixote or Slumdog Millionaire.

For three days in early October 2009 I visited the set of Rod Lurie‘s Straw Dogs in Shreveport, Louisiana. The time I spent chatting with the cast and crew and watching a couple of scenes being shot was interesting and occasionally fascinating. I was mezzo-mezzo with the film that resulted (no one thought it approached the level of Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 original) but we’ll let that go for now.

I actually don’t know why I’m mentioning Lurie or the film because the defining event of my Shreveport visit was hooking up with a 39 year-old blonde from Florida. Let’s call her Melissa.

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No firm opinion about Scott Mantz‘s prediction, but I’ve heard the same from others (including a top-tier critic friend) and it wouldn’t surprise me if things break this way. Mantz, however, should have double-checked the Green Book release date — Friday, 11.16, not Wednesday, 11.21. So no birthday convergence.

I’m sorry but I have to go vote now (straight Democratic) so I can cancel out the preferences of some person I don’t agree with.

On 11.9 a six-CD deluxe re-issue of the Beatles’ White Album will go on sale. Boilerplate: “The album’s 30 tracks are newly mixed by producer Giles Martin and mix engineer Sam Okell in stereo and 5.1 surround audio, joined by 27 early acoustic demos and 50 session takes, most of which are previously unreleased in any form.”

The late George Martin once remarked that there were too many sub-par tracks on the White Album, and that it would have been a better package if the chaff had been removed. I agree with him. The White Album is an angry, jagged, bloated thing — constantly arguing with itself and indeed the very concept of unity. It’s full of ego wars and me-me-me.

Here’s the HE version of a better, pruned-down version — a single disc, 14 tracks, and in this order:

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I can report directly that on the new 4K 2001 disc, the Discovery tunnel wall is indeed a kind of light rose-beige color. And yet the tunnel in the 2007 2001 Bluray, which I looked at this morning, is straight white. And I’m doubting the rose-beige thing. As I wrote a few days ago, “After watching 2001 in theatres at least 14 or 15 times over the last half-century, I’ve never once seen a print with a faint rosey-orange tint in the passageway scene. Not once, not ever.”

You have to wonder why Stanley Kubrick would have said to his set designer, “I don’t want the walls to be plain white or bone white…I want a William Haines feeling…I want a warmer, gentler, more feminine color.” I could see George Cukor or Vincent Minnelli requesting this, but not Kubrick.

from 2007 Bluray.

from 2018 4K Bluray (second generation capture).

I can also report that the MGM logo on the 2007 Bluray is indeed bright blue with white lettering, and that the same image on the 4K disc is dark blue with amber lettering. I’ve seen them both with my own eyes, and only one is correct. I think it’s the former. I think the dark blue-with-yellow-lettering logo is bullshit.

If you haven’t signed change.org’s “keep Filmstruck alive” petition, please do so. It was launched about a week and a half ago, and is now shooting for 50,000 subscribers.

In Henry Barrial‘s Driver X (IFC Films, 11.30), Patrick Fabian is a middle-aged family man forced to become an Uber-Lyft driver to stay afloat. Does it figure that a guy in his mid ’50s would be totally clueless about social media, particularly one who owned his own record store? Born in ’64, Fabian (Better Call Saul) was in his early 30s when the internet caught on — how could he be this divorced from the cyber realm? IMDB posters have praised it, but the fact that Driver X has only played at minor film festivals…do the math. No one from IFC Films has passed along a screening invite or a link, but I’d like to see it.

Received last night from journalist pally: “First Reformed is fifth-ranked in your Gold Derby Best Picture tally? That’s hilarious.”

HE response, tapped out this morning: “You can call it ‘hilarious’ by the follow-the-herd standards of Gold Derby (baahh!) but the know-it-alls ignoring an austere, strikingly plain moralistic drama….. a critically praised Bresson-like film that pulses with stripped-down frankness and moral guilt …perhaps the greatest moral fable of this century…a film that asks straight from the shoulder what the hell we’re all doing to the planet…not to mention that it’s Paul Schrader’s big comeback…his best since Hardcore…a film that all the top critics were creaming over last May and which obviously put Ethan Hawke’s name into Best Actor contention…handicappers IGNORING this film because (a) it wasn’t released after Labor Day and (b) because A24 has apparently thrown in the towel…THAT’S hilarious.

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I keep flip-flopping on my Best Picture chart. Like everyone else I’m torn between my constantly evolving concepts of what constitutes serious film art vs. well-crafted films that I feel a special kinship or bond with. One minute I’m a Green Book guy, and the next I’m back on Team Roma. I know which films are most likely to be nominated, but I can’t stand behind some of them them with the same fervor that I feel for films that I know deserve extra-special merit badges. I can’t seem to settle on an order that relaxes me; I’m always fiddling around or re-thinking. I guess that’s how it should be.

Yesterday afternoon I watched WHE’s 4K Bluray of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I saw it on a mint-condition 65-inch OLED, and it really is quite wonderful in nearly every respect. Magnificent colors, needle-weave detail, awesome sound, fine beard-stubble, Discovery space-suit fabric contemplation — just about everything looks right.

In my mind and as we speak, the most glorious aspect of the 4K is that there isn’t a single trace of Chris Nolan‘s urine-and-teal color scheme. Thank God that awful nightmare is over. Why WHE marketers chose to announce to the world last summer that the 4K is “built upon” Nolan’s 70mm non-restoration is just…I don’t know what to think but the mind reels. Anyway, five remarks:

One, the background color of the opening MGM logo used to be a bright, medium-toned blue, and the MGM letters used to be pretty close to white. On the 4K Bluray it’s a dark, just-before-nightfall blue and the letters are now yellowish — a whole different beginning than ever seen before.

Two, at least one closeup of aging Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) during the French chateau finale seems needlessly dark. As far as this scene is concerned I still prefer the 2007 1080p Bluray version…sorry.

Three, the absolute blackness of space isn’t quite there. It’s not a huge problem, but it could and should have been darker in this respect.

Four, the space-station lounge scene in which Dr. Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester) spars with Dr. Andrei Smyslov (Leonard Rossiter) is supposed to end with a fast fade to black and then quickly fade right back into a static establishing shot of Floyd’s shuttle heading for the moon — and the fade-in timing (which could been correctly presented if WHE had wanted to be precise) is wrong. Not a disaster but weird all the same.

And five, I watched portions of the 1080p Bluray version also, and I could definitely spot differences between this and the 4K. The regular Bluray will seem completely fine to one and all, but oh, mama, the 4K version is noticably sharper, cleaner, fuller-toned and more pristine. I’m thinking hard about springing for a 4K player now.

I’ve been waiting for a break in the schedule, and now it’s here. I’ll finally be sitting down this evening with the first four episodes of Ben Stiller, Brett Johnson, Michael Tolkin and Jerry Stahl‘s Escape at Donnemara. Benicio del Toro as Richard Matt, Patricia Arquette as Tilly “Shaw-skank” Mitchell, Paul Dano as David Sweat, Bonnie Hunt as a New York State inspector general and Michael Imperioli (!) as NY governor Andrew Cuomo. The final four episodes will be available to press persons soon, I’m told.

Boilerplate: The 2015 Clinton Correctional Facility escape took place on June 6, 2015, when two inmates, Richard Matt and David Sweat, were discovered missing during a 5:17 a.m. bed check at the maximum security Clinton Correctional Facility. Matt and Sweat were both in for murder. Roughly three weeks later Matt was shot and killed near Malone, New York. Two days later Sweat was shot and taken into custody. The manhunt and investigation was said to cost about $23 million.

“Love-Starved Wife Frees Two Caged Bids,” posted on 8.18.18, https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2018/08/love-starved-wife-frees-two-caged-birds/