From the p.r. copy: “Kevin Macdonald‘s Whitney uses rare archival footage and photos of the late Grammy-winning singer Whitney Houston for a portrait of the legendary singer’s life and career. The first documentary to be approved by the Whitney Houston Estate, pic will take a comprehensive and intimate look at the superstar’s triumphs and struggles during her 30-year career in the entertainment business.”

It seems significant that the teaser-trailer doesn’t mention singer-songwriter Bobby Brown, who was married to Houston for 14 years (’92 to ’06) and has long been regarded as a non-helpful influence in her life, particularly regarding her substance-abuse issues.

Everyone will need to compare MacDonald’s doc to Nick Broomfield‘s Whitney: Can I Be Me, a 2017 Showtime doc that was fairly candid about some things that I suspect MacDonald will skirt or pay little attention to. Whitney’s drug use, the Brown relationship, her hidden sexuality (which was reiterated by her father in a 2017 interview), and her daughter Bobbi Christina Brown, who died under regrettable circumstances at age 22.

Two weeks hence Tony Zierra‘s Filmworker, a brilliant tale of the life and times of Leon Vitali, will open at Manhattan’s Metrograph, and then a week later at West L.A.’s Nuart. I’ve been insisting for months that this is an absolutely world-class doc, not to mention the best inside-the-beltway, what-it-was-really-like Stanley Kubrick doc ever made.

Yesterday I sat down with Vitali at a Starbucks in Culver City. We shot the shit for 40 minutes or so, the only problem being that we sat outside on a patio, and that meant contending with the rumble of L.A. traffic — cars, trucks, ambulances, fire engines — not to mention a Starbucks cleaning person who kept generating that awful “aaahhhggg!” sound when you drag metal tables and chairs across concrete. So it might be a bit of a struggle to listen to our chat, but by all means have a go.

Leon Vitali, former actor (Barry Lyndon, Eyes Wide Shut), longtime Stanley Kubrick assistant, Warner Bros. visual consultant and star of Filmworker (Kino Lorber, 5.11).

Given the traffic noise and the difficulty in hearing each and every syllable, I asked Leon whatever came into my head, chatting more than interviewing really.

Vitali: “I did the color timing on the 2001: A Space Odyssey 4K Bluray, and 4K is so beautiful…the details, the shadows…looking at it on these very high resolution monitors. It looks great, everybody loves it, and I’m not blowing my own trumpet. HE: “What would you say is the difference between the forthcoming unrestored Chris Nolan version and the spiffed-up 4K Bluray?” Vitali: “The difference is that the 4K has more clarity and sharpness and detail.” HE: “So people seeing the Nolan version in Cannes will say, ‘This is wonderful…not as sharp or as clear as the 4K but it looks very good.'”

Sidenote: For some reason I developed an idea years ago, perhaps after speaking with Dan Richter, the guy who played the bone-tossing “Moonwtacher” in 2001, that the “Dawn of Man” sequence was shot early in the schedule. Vitali told me yesterday that it was actually the last thing to be shot.

HE: “Your voice has a softer quality right now, but there are passages in Filmworker in which it has that deep, resonant, gravelly sound…the kind of great-sounding voice that can only result from years and years of cigarette smoking. Are you smoking now?” Vitali: “Not as much. I’ve cut down. At my height with Stanley I was smoking three packs a day. Stanley [himself] would have one every now and then.”

HE: “I always loved the sound of Stanley’s voice. The timbre and the accent. The voice of a cultured, well-educated New York cab driver. A guy who grew up in the Bronx and knew all the angles.” Vitali: “He never lost that.”

HE: “The special groove of Filmworker for me, is that when you’ve found something that really matters to you…that for all practical and aesthetic purposes has become a source of profound satisfaction, as your work with Stanley became…for me it makes Filmworker such a sublime film, because it understands and conveys that special devotion.” Vitali: “I went to drama school [when young] and I met this guy who taught me how to harness a certain inner energy…it made me realize, once you really get into something, something that really seeps in and opens you up…you’re in there and it’s no contest…you know?”

Cinematographer Svetlana Cvetko, whom I’ve been referring to as “HE’s own” for several years, has become a bona fide hyphenate — a director-dp. After making the festival rounds last year with her doc short, Yours Sincerely, Lois Weber, she began directing a self-penned feature. Produced by Nick Sarkisov and shot in black-and-white widescreen (2.39:1), it’s called My Crazy Nature.

It’s about a menage a trois relationship between two guys and a girl. The portions I’ve seen (and the silky monochrome capturings are truly magnificent) reminded me at times of Francois Truffaut‘s Jules and Jim (’62) with a dash of Coline Serreau‘s Pourquois Pas? (’77).

Alas, Svetlana has had to recently interrupt this passion project (which has been filming locally as well as in Europe) to direct an indie-financed drama called Foreign Exchange, costarring Meet The Parents‘ Teri Polo and Niptuck‘s Dylan Walsh.

Svet’s dp credits, working backwards: Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story (post-production), Jonathan Parker‘s The Architect and several docs (including partial cinematography) — Silicon Cowboys, Brand: A Second Coming, Red Army, Inequality for All, Miss Representation and Inside Job.

Season #2 of Westworld has been airing for a few days now, but I’m pretty firm about not watching it. At all. Not this horse. Some other time.

Once again, the Brenkilco assessment: “The problem with episodic TV narratives designed to blow minds is that the form and intention are at odds. A show designed to run until the audience gets tired of it cannot by definition have a satisfying structure. It can only keep throwing elements into the mix until, like Lost or Twin Peaks, it collapses under the weight of its own intriguing but random complications.”

In short, my loathing for season #1 — that feeling of being fiddled and diddled without end, of several storylines unfolding and expanding for no purpose than to keep unfolding and expanding — is such that I’m determined to hate season #2 without watching it. I don’t care how that sounds or what it implies. Come hell or high water, I will not go there.

One question for those who saw the season #2 opener: Now that the host revolt is in full swing, it seems logical that the Westworld staffers, naturally concerned about their own survival as well as lawsuits and whatnot, would call in outside law enforcement. Perhaps even state militia. What’s preventing this? What am I missing?

From a 4.20 review by CNN’s Brian Lowry: “The first half of [season #2] repeats the show’s more impenetrable drawbacks — playing three-dimensional chess, while spending too much time sadistically blowing away pawns. The result is a show that’s easier to admire than consistently like.

“The push and pull of Westworld is that it grapples with deep intellectual conundrums while reveling in a kind of numbing pageant of death and destruction. Where the latter is organic to the world of HBO’s other huge genre hit, Game of Thrones, it doesn’t always feel integral to the story here, but rather a means of killing (and killing and killing) time.”

“For all its strengths, the series [is] a bit of a slog, at times, as the wheels turn along the dusty, blood-specked road to wherever this maze leads.”

Stephen Colbert‘s riff on yesterday morning’s Donald Trump tirade (29 minutes and 25 seconds) on Fox and Friends is worth it for the 45-second satirical passage beginning at 6:20 and ending at 7:05 — the inner thoughts of co-hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade as they listen to the enraged Trump go on and on and on.

Watch the actual “Fox and Friends” video and study Kilmeade’s facial expressions starting around the 20-minute mark. The man is clearly concerned about Trump’s unhinged schpiel while struggling with himself about how to wind things down without sacrificing the required tone of respect and deference. Doocy is fairly glassy-eyed while Earhardt…is that a look of maternal concern or is she just concentrating for all she’s worth?

On 4.24 a guy named Krishna Ramesh Kumar posted a video essay that compares the forthcoming, Christoper Nolan-approved, unrestored 50th anniversary re-release of 2001: A Space Odyssey with corresponding images from the Warner Home Video 2007 Bluray. Please watch the essay but pay particular attention to three sets of comparison captures that I’ve posted below. The 2007 Bluray images are on top; the unrestored 70mm Nolan versions are below. The Nolan is obviously warmer, yellower and even teal-ish with weak contrasts and less detail. Plus it has no deep blacks or true whites. It looks weathered.

And this, the Nolan, is apparently what’s being re-released into theatres in May. The images rendered for the upcoming 4K Ultra HD version of 2001, which pops on May 8th, will be restricted to those with 4K Bluray players. It seems obvious to me that the colors in the Nolan aren’t as satisfying and the images are less precise than even Warner Home Video’s 11-year-old Bluray, much less whatever the new 4K version will deliver. This seems absolutely NUTS.

Examine the 2007 version of Dave Bowman‘s face through his red space helmet visor vs. the far less distinct Nolan version — anyone who says that the Nolan version is preferable needs to be hunted down by men in white coats RIGHT NOW and sent off to an insane asylum. Examine the “Dawn of Man” bone-bashing images — the sky in the 2007 version is true blue but a kind of greenish teal in the Nolan version. Examine the two close-up images of HAL — you can obviously see more red-glow detail in the 2007 version while the Nolan is darker and murkier. Who in their right mind would say “the Nolan versions are better”? This is FULL-ON INSANITY.

2007 Bluray capture above; unrestored Nolan verson below.

ditto

ditto

Legendary NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw hasn’t exactly been outed as the new Charlie Rose, but for a brief period in 1993 and ’94, when he was in his mid 50s, Brokaw allegedly made NBC news reporter Linda Vester feel sexually pressured and uncomfortable (i.e., “groped and assaulted”). Brokaw’s horndog moves were irksome and humiliating, she says, and now, 24 years later, she’s telling the tale.

On the other hand Brokaw apparently didn’t act like some lust-crazed, nostril-breathing animal, but like a guy who wanted some heavy breathing with a pretty younger woman, and was fairly persistent about trying to win Vester over, using his power and position. After two tries it didn’t work and he backed off.

How bad is this? Not very, it seems. But from Vester’s perspective it was a major drag. Brokaw is denying, for the most part. Should he suffer some sort of after-the-fact managerial admonishment? Should he offer some sort of apology? Offer to donate money to the #TimesUp legal fund?

Three months ago Hollywood Elsewhere saw the same sadistic Suspiria scene that director Luca Guadagnino screened earlier today at Cinemacon. The general reaction so far has been “whoa, that was intense.” Set in a rainy, chilly Berlin sometime in the ’70s, the scene happens inside a prestigious dance academy. Some kind of brutal hex decimates a middle-aged woman, apparently because she’s seen as an enemy of a witch’s coven that operates out of the dance school, and which is run by Tilda Swinton.

As a young American ballerina (Dakota Johnson) dances and twirls, the victim is slapped and pounded and walloped by some invisible voodoo-doll force.

I felt dazzled and jarred by this sequence. First rate, very well cut, etc. I was especially taken by a shadowy extreme close-up of a smiling witch face. I didn’t quite know what to do with the rainy Berlin atmosphere and especially all the sunlight that floods into the dance studio. Like everyone else on the planet, I associate horror with a dark, shadowy vibe — weird mood lighting, impressionistic designs, hints of blood and organs, a generally creepy feeling. This didn’t look like horror — it looked like matter-of-fact realism.

What I love about Guadagnino’s I Am Love, A Bigger Splash and Call Me By Your Name is that they’re all “Luca” — they all convey that lulling, sensual, sun-dappled northern Italian atmosphere — a way of being, living, tasting, feeling, etc.

Suspiria is obviously a departure from this — primarily about Luca adapting and expanding upon his reactions to Argento’s 1977 classic, and then blending this with his own instincts and dreamscapes.

Before I saw the Suspiria clip I had somehow imagined that Luca might integrate his “signature” style into the Argento realm and produce a chilling but sensual northern Italian horror film. Scary but with that special Luca attitude and chemistry. Something along those lines.

What I saw and felt lacked that familiar elegance, that warmth, that “this is who I am and how I live my life” feeling. Which obviously makes sense, given the witches-and-bitches subject matter.

As I didn’t know the victim character but presumed she was in a position to threaten the coven, I could only watch her agony as she was thrown around and contorted and began vomiting yellow liquid.

I’m not saying it’s unwelcome to see Guadagnino operating in a horror realm and igniting his imagination with fresh impressions, but it didn’t feel familiar in that sensual “welcome to my world” way that I’ve come to associate with his manner/vision/style.

Live-wire concert footage from Bryan Singer and Dexter Fletcher‘s Bohemian Rhapsody (20th Century Fox, 11.2) was screened a while ago at Cinemacon. Rami Malek (who really doesn’t look much like the Parsi-descended, Zanzibar-born Freddie Mercury) was shown performing the title tune plus “We Are The Champions,” etc.

Neither Singer nor Fletcher made an appearance, which is weird. Tell me how Singer doesn’t end up with the lion’s share of credit. He directed…what, 85% if not 90% of the film before Fletcher took over?

No one’s ever doubted that Malek wouldn’t channel Mercury to everyone’s delight, particularly Queen fans. A Best Actor Oscar nomination seems achievable if not likely. The question, as I mentioned in a 4.17 thumbnail appraisal of an early draft of the Bohemian Rhapsody script, is whether or not the finished film will seem a little too “family friendly” and/or lacking a certain adult edge.

As I said a couple of days ago, death has never been respected in the Marvel nor the D.C. universe. The MCU “mostly regards death and serious physical injury as a tease, a plot toy, something to fiddle or fuck with until the apparently dead character comes back to life,” I reflected at one point.

I believe in some of the deaths that happen in Avengers: Infinity War (i.e., the passings of minor characters) but certainly not the digital disintegration ones that happen with a snap of Thanos’ fingers. It’s almost all bullshit, almost all of it likely to be reversed or reneged upon in the Infinity War sequel that will open a year from now.

Nonetheless, author and Film Threat founder & publisher Chris Gore recently said on Facebook that he believes Avengers: Infinity War will prove a very traumatic event for younger moviegoers. He said he noticed a young kid “balling” (sic) after Tuesday’s all-media at the El Capitan. To which I replied, “Gee…tough, kid. Sorry to break it to ya, but death happens to everyone and everything. I wish it were otherwise. On top of which the guys who make Marvel movies are liars and con artists. You really shouldn’t fall for their bullshit because, really, it’s all a crock.”

It sounds, in short, like the bawling child has been raised in a fantasy vacuum by parents who know not what they do. An eight-year-old bawling over Bambi’s mother getting shot by a hunter — that I understand. (When I was seven or eight I dreamt that my mom died, and it took me a couple of days to get over it.) But bawling over a team of wisecracking superheroes played by a gang of ironically removed, abundantly well-compensated actors who are in it solely for the paychecks…please!

Bill Cosby, 80, is almost certainly going to do some time. Having been found guilty today of three counts of aggravated indecent assault (i.e., mickey-finn rape), the legendary comedian and TV star could receive a sentence of ten years, which means he’ll probably serve what? 22 months or more? Throw the book at him.

Each of the counts — penetration with lack of consent, penetration while unconscious, and penetration after administering an intoxicant — are punishable by up to 10 years in state prison, although in Pennsylvania sentences are sometimes served concurrently.

The 45 Cosby victims (i.e., “the Cosbies”) need to gather together this evening, or at least hit bars or restaurants near their homes, and raise a glass.

Starting at 1:15: “Both in the United States and Europe, we are living through a time of anger and fear. But these feelings do not build anything. You can play with fear and anger for a time, but anger only freezes and weakens us. As Franklin Roosevelt said in his first inaugural [address], ‘The only thing we have to fear is hear itself.'”