My self tape for the role of Spider-Man? Narration by Jason Walsh. pic.twitter.com/nKgNdPvEPw

— Brie Larson (@brielarson) December 31, 2018

HE to Cristian Mungiu, Romania-based director of the classic, world-renowned 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days

“Cristian — Greetings & salutations. Could I ask you to please explain the aspect-ratio situation on the Criterion Bluray of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days?’

“My recollection is that the film was originally shown in either 1.78:1 or 1.85:1 or 2:1. But a Gary Tooze review of the forthcoming Criterion Bluray says (I think) it’s presented at 2:39:1.

What does the audience gain from the top half of Anamaria Marinca’s head being chopped off? What does it gain from Vlad Ivanov‘s forearms and hands being sliced off?

Quote: “The framing is slightly different than previous releases, with the image showing more on the top and left of the frame, with slightly less at the bottom (the right edge of the frame staying the same).”

“‘Slightly’ different? Tooze’s frame captures show that the Criterion version is MUCH wider than previous versions, and that significant amounts of visual information have been lopped off the tops and bottoms.

“I haven’t seen the Criterion Bluray but if Tooze’s description is correct, why would your film suddenly be presented in a different aspect ratio after so many years? Because once again, a Criterion Bluray has cleavered visual information for no discernible reason. I prefer the earlier versions, which felt more natural with ample breathing room. I generally deplore Criterion’s arbitrary aspect-ratio revisionism. Their recent slicing of Some Like It Hot (1.66 cleavered down to 1.85) was unforgivable.

“Hope you are well. — Jeffrey Wells, HE”

From Mark Smith: “Last night my wife and I caught a restored DCP of The Apartment at the Metrograph. I’d only seen this 1960 classic once or twice when I was younger, but have now watched it three times in the past six months. It just gets better and better.

“But last night was the first time I saw it with an audience.

“The crowd encompassed a wide age range. Some Millennials (20s), some middle-ish (35-45), some older (50s). My wife and I are 46.

“I was shocked — shocked, I tell you! — at how many people, old and young, were laughing during the scene where Jack Kruschen‘s Dr. Dreyfuss is trying to revive Fran Kubelik (Shirley Maclaine), particularly when he’s slapping her across the face. I guess it was nervous laughter, perhaps a ‘ha-ha, isn’t this part sooo dated?’ type of nervous laughter, but I was pretty put off by their reaction.

“The movie had been a sweet-but-scathing comedy up to that point, playing it broad-but-grounded with a sprinkling of genuine sadness that never veers into the Maudlinville.

“But that slap is a turning point: not only a literal slap to keep a character we really like from dying, but it’s a figurative slap in the face for Jack Lemmon‘s C.C. Baxter, the moment where he really begins his moral about-face; and it’s a slap to the audience, to wake them up and shout ‘Hey! Don’t you realize this whole situation — cheating husbands, drunken floozies, selling your soul for a window office — which we’ve presented up to now for laughs, is actually reeeeally fucked up and twisted?”

(Also: Was The Apartment the first film to allow an audience to hear a character vomiting off-screen?)

“But let’s say the audience was laughing out of shock that the doctor was slapping the girl in the face…well, what the fuck else was he supposed to do, given his limited resources? Being woken up in the middle of the night, his only supplies a black bag with a B12 cocktail, some instant coffee and an ineffectual schnook for an assistant? His mission was to keep the woman awake or else she’s DEAD.

“What the fuck is WRONG with you idiots??

“But the digital restoration looked really really nice. And the part where Fran is running down the street to Baxter’s apartment is one of the great romantic moments in cinema. What a great fucking movie.”

Could No Country For Old Men be made today? I can’t see why not. Last time I checked bleak fatalistic nihilism didn’t necessarily argue with the wokester party line.

Josh Brolin‘s out-of-focus footage of Woody Harrelson was almost certainly accidental, but I like flirting with the idea that it was half-intentional. When Harrelson asks if his mike is okay (3:51), the back-and-forth that ensues between he and Brolin is somewhere between surreal and mildly amusing. At 5:09 Brolin returns to out-of-focus Harrelson. At 5:17, Harrelson says, “I feel like I’m comin’ off a little bit strange.” And then at 5:30, Brolin initiates a hilarious fade-to-black while Harrelson is in mid-sentence.

All “making of” docs should be on this level…brilliant.

On 12.28 World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy posted titles of 13 late 20th Century comedies that couldn’t be made today, and if they were made would be torn apart on Twitter by “woke” dogs and eaten alive. Tropic Thunder, Blazing Saddles, Airplane, There’s Something About Mary, Team America, The Jerk, MASH, Animal House, Borat, Caddyshack, Trading Places, Bad Santa and A Fish Called Wanda. Was he right? Did he forget a few titles?

We all understand that almost all good comedies are about tweaking social norms and giving some kind of offense, and these days, of course, giving offense is out. Hollywood Elsewhere believes that almost any late 20th Century comedy that focused on a straight male character living any kind of louche lifestyle (including any with a moderate, comme ci comme ca sexual appetite) would be dead in the water if someone attempted to remake it. A Shampoo remake wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in today’s climate…not a chance.

Other verboten comedies mentioned on Facebook comment thread: Soul Man. Watermelon Man. Four Lions. The Hangover. Private Benjamin. Trading Places. Dr. Detroit. 1941. The Breakfast Club. Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.

Facebook comment #1: “A lot of these movies could get remade it’s just more likely the elements read now as offensive would be excised, toned down, or re-conceptualized to turn them on their ear in some wokey way. And they’d almost certainly be worse.”

Facebook comment #2: “They should teach a class in school called ‘context.'”

Facebook comment #3: “Altman’s MASH would never get made and I’m surprised they haven’t tried to burn it yet.”

Hotshot Hollywood journalist who knows everyone and everything: “There’s no question that Barack Obama and his people had someone put this list together based on other critics’ lists. No way [did Obama choose] Annihilation [on his own steam]. It’s purely a critical conceit when movies like this appear on year-end lists. Ditto a lot of the other titles on there. I doubt Obama has seen two thirds of them.”

HE repeat #1: “Barack Obama knows a Marvel superhero flick when he sees one. He’s been around the block, knows the score. And he’s certainly on to the historical and cultural achievement game that Black Panther and its admirers are playing. There was no alternative, no other way to go — he had to put Black Panther high on his list.”

HE repeat #2: “Obama almost certainly saw Green Book. I’d be very surprised if he wasn’t at least glancingly aware that across the board it’s among the top five Gold Derby Best Picture hotties. Five’ll get you ten he saw it, recognized its value and decided against including it because he didn’t want to invite the derision of the woke thugs.”

HE repeat #3: “I would respectfully argue that Obama’s sense of taste is flawed, as the presence of the obviously mediocre, wildly over-praised Blindspotting on his list confirms.”

I know this’ll never happen for the same reason that cowardice doesn’t require a conspiracy — it just comes naturally to so many. But it would be so wonderful if Green Book fans within the Academy, guilds, HFPA and BFCA would quietly resolve to vote for Peter Farrelly’s film in order to send a nice, big, friendly “kiss our collective ass” message to the woke thugs in the film critic community.

Not because it’s necessarily the best film of 2018 (although it may be that to some), but because it’s clean and confident and very well made — a genial film that knows exactly what it’s doing and why and, despite what the p.c. take-down crowd has written, isn’t guilty of any significant crimes. It has a good adult heart, and feels like sublime anti-Trump medicine while you’re watching it.

In other words, a vote for Green Book could, with the right collective adjustment of attitude, be understood as a vote of solidarity with all the Joe and Jane Popcorns out there who despise politically correct culture.

From Owen Gleiberman‘s latest Variety column, titled “What Each Possible 2018 Best Picture Winner Would Mean“:

“Last fall, when I first saw this racially themed 1962 buddies-with-nothing-in-common road movie, I thought it had a clear chance to win best picture. It’s that kind of finely etched and wittily sincere lump-in-the-throat liberal crowd-pleaser. But its politics, in the eyes of some, are tainted by (it is argued) a certain patronizing quaintness that has lived past its cinematic sell-by date.

“So what will it mean if Green Book emerges from all that and wins anyway? It will mean not just that the movie strikes a powerful comedic-dramatic chord, but that the more traditional voices of Hollywood want the world to know that this is the sort of middlebrow humanistic movie that still resonates with them. It would represent, in many ways, a vote against the new wave of Academy members.”

It’s my fault for failing to get Anya, our 18-month-old Siamese, spayed last spring or summer. Guilty. But I wasn’t the one who let her out when she was in heat. She wound up doing the deed with a dark gray alley cat — a commoner. She gave birth to seven kittens two days ago around noon, and every one is the spittin’ image of trampy dad. I was hoping at least one or two would be a junior Anya (creamy beige coat, bright blue eyes, exceptional intelligence) but no dice.

Worse, Anya is apparently uncomfortable with the challenge of nursing seven kittens. (She has eight nipples so go figure.) For reasons I can’t fathom she’s been carrying one, two or three kittens out of the kitten box and into the bedroom and under the sheets. She’s constantly moving them around. She seems to be saying one of two things: (a) “Help me out…I can’t do this alone” or (b) “I’m not comfortable with the kitten box being in the living room…the bedroom feels safer.”

I’ve read that if feline queens decide they have too many kittens they’ll isolate one from the brood, the idea being to let nature takes its course. To guard against one of them dying from malnutrition I’ve bought a can of KMR (kitten milk replacer) and a tiny plastic nursing bottle. I’ve been nursing two or three every so often, at random.

You can’t tell them apart. All the same shade of gray, their eyes closed…seven squeaky little mice.

“And I wish I’d been out in Stone Canyon /
When the lights on all the Christmas trees went out /
But I been burnin’ my bell, book and candle /
And the restoration plays have all gone ’round” — from “Winter“, a Jagger-Richards song on Goat’s Head Soup, their least admired ’70s album.

As far as I’m able to tell, Armond White‘s N.Y. Press review of Peter Glenville‘s Becket, which appeared roughly 12 years ago, is no longer retrievable. I posted a condensed version on 1.30.07. It closely echoed a Becket riff I’d posted on 2.3.06. I’m re-posting both here.

White: “Ostensibly the story of King Henry II appointing his confident Thomas a’ Becket to be Archbishop of Canterbury and then reneging on his bequest — a decision that historically split England’s religious affiliation — Becket is mostly fascinating as a love story between two men.

“Jean Anoulih‘s stage play is strengthened by the conflict of worldly affection and spiritual devotion when Becket’s born-again allegiance to God takes precedent over his fealty to Henry. This movie version is deeper than anything the makers of Brokeback Mountain could ever conceive — or admit to.

“Re-seeing Becket in light of the recent so-called breakthrough for gay film subjects makes one realize how advanced mainstream filmmaking used to be. Peter O’Toole‘s Henry and Richard Burton‘s Becket profess their regard for each other with bold openness and extravagant anguish. Precisely because this affection remains Becket’s subtext, it is never treated as a self-congratulatory end in itself. O’Toole and Burton are artistically free to fully vent their characters’ emotions.”

Director Peter Glenville “subtly encodes this historical epic with sexual intimations: Henry and Becket’s tandem escapades, phallic candles, bareback horseriding, etc. But he takes a dry approach to the complications of lost-love and how these legendary leaders deprived themselves — Becket through an excess of religious fervor, opposing the King’s edict out of personal arrogance; Henry through unchecked emotionalism and personal vengeance.

“This psychological depth gives Becket an edge over the other ’60s dramas about the Plantagenet rulers (A Man for All Seasons, The Lion in Winter, Anne of the Thousand Days) and puts it close to the sophistication of Lawrence of Arabia and, yes, My Own Private Idaho.”

It’s been obvious from the get-go that Disney’s forthcoming Jungle Cruise (7.24.20) is strictly for the family-moron trade. It therefore shouldn’t matter (certainly not to HE readers) how much Dwayne Johnson or Emily Blunt were paid for their services. Nonetheless TMZ reported yesterday with some hoo-hah that Johnson was paid $22 million while Blunt “only” received a piddly $9 million.

Sorry but this doesn’t have the same pay disparity ring as the notorious Mark Wahlberg-Michelle Williams additional shooting compensation saga on All The Money in the World.

As the term “jungle” connotes thrills and danger in a wild, slithery, Tarzan-like atmosphere with hippos, pythons and chimpanzees, the film is obviously geared to allow Johnson to perform his brawny machismo routine at certain critical junctures in the narrative.

If the template is a dumbshit African Queen, Johnson is aping Humphrey Bogart‘s Charlie Allnut character with Blunt playing Katharine Hepburn‘s Rosie. Two-handers are all about conflict and chemistry and give-and-take so why isn’t the pay even-steven? Fair question.

But Jungle Cruise is obviously adhering to a classic formula — a flawed male alpha figure in the front-and-center position with a spirited woman of refinement and sensitivity who steps in and gradually ups his game. Blunt isn’t the Jungle Cruise charisma magnet — Johnson is. She knows it, Disney knows it, HE readers know it.

Wiki synopsis for Greg Pritikin‘s The Last Laugh (Netflix, 1.11.19): “Buddy Green (Richard Dreyfuss), a former stand up comedian who retired from the spotlight 50 years ago, reunites with his former manager Al Hart (Chevy Chase) after being convinced to do one last comedy tour.”

Green is presumably meant to be in his early 70s, or roughly Dreyfuss’s age. Does it make any sense that Green retired in ’68, or five years before Dreyfuss’s glow-of-youth breakout performance in American Graffiti (’73)? Why couldn’t he at least have retired in the late ’80s as he was hitting 40? I could half-buy that, but nobody retires at age 21. Or 31, for that matter.

Pritikin Wikipage warning: “Pritikin feels very strongly about people using electronic devices on airplanes. Quote from a 2013 New York Times article: ‘I’ve almost come to fisticuffs with some passengers who refuse to turn off their phone. I take airplane safety very seriously.’