The greatest extended uncut shot in movie-western history, full of dark irony and without a word of dialogue, happens near the end of William Wyler‘s The Big Country (’58). For years I’d told myself it lasts 75 seconds (2:25 to 3:41) but Wyler actually uses a five-second MCU cutaway (3:25 to 3:30) to allow Charlton Heston to express contempt for Charles Bickford‘s stubborn hostility as well as a bit of self-loathing for himself. It’s so brilliant the way Wyler shows the Terrill ranch hands gradually joining in two groups — three at first, a gap, and then another six or seven.

Tilda Swinton [after the jump] says she’s seen Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger‘s I Know Where I’m Going (’45) many times, but until this morning I’d never even heard of it. Or…wait, maybe that’s wrong. Maybe I’d read about it but rejected it out of hand because the two stars, Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey, held no immediate interest. (Hiller won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work in Separate Tables, but in my eyes her finest performance was as Paul Scofield‘s lion-like wife in A Man For All Seasons.) Criterion has a DVD version for $32; I’ve just rented an HD version via Amazon for nearly one-tenth the cost.

I like to watch films at home with strong, crisp sound, or the way they sound at any first-rate venue. But a certain party doesn’t like what she regards as too-loud sound, and so a few weeks back I invested in some SONY-made wireless headphones in order to save the marriage. But I bought the wrong kind or they didn’t work or whatever. So yesterday I contacted a friendly speaker specialist on Yelp. He suggested going with Sennheiser RS-185 wireless headphones. He brought them over, hooked them up and they worked for the most part. But they didn’t deliver booming sound, which any good pair of earphones should do. They delivered sound that’s loud enough to hear with moderate sound levels, but not loud enough to give you a headache. All sound receivers should have that capability, but the RS-185s wouldn’t oblige.

Worse, the earphones seemed to favor 21st Century films. My Zero Dark Thirty Bluray sounded fine, but Lawrence of Arabia was only moderately audible. No big booms. The voices of Peter O’Toole, Claude Rains, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quayle, Anthony Quinn and Jack Hawkins were muted — no shouting allowed. The speaker guy said that Lawrence wasn’t as loud because the late David Lean recorded and mixed it with early 1960s analog technology, and so it’s naturally not going to really sing and throb with 21st Century digital processors. I said, “Oh, come on…that’s silly! The Sony Bluray guys who remastered the Lawrence of Arabia soundtrack knew what they were doing and they certainly didn’t muffle the sound.” So we had to argue that one for a while.

Then he said I needed to try a different pair of Sennheiser wireless headphones (the RS-175), and predicted they would make me happier. So that’s the next move. This whole irksome episode consumed roughly two and a half hours.

You’re having what seems like an exciting REM dream. And then, just like that, exciting gives way to threatening, and suddenly it’s a nightmare.

This is what happened this morning around…oh, 3:30 or 4 am. A run-of-the-mill ladder dream. It was my task to climb a sturdy but thin step ladder to the top. Several onlookers were standing at the base, egging me on. I was okay at first (I worked for a couple of years as a tree surgeon in my early 20s so don’t tell me), but then the ladder stopped being a purely-vertical 90-degree thing. It began to bend over — 85 degrees, and then 80, 75, 70 — and then twist like a beanstalk. “Whoa, whoa…I’m not doing this,” I declared as I began to climb back down. The onlookers began to hoot and catcall — “C’mon, Jeff!…show some balls!…don’t be a pussy, Wells!” etc.

The obvious metaphor is that my job (essentially a daily high-wire act) intimidates me and that I crave the security of terra firma. Maybe I do but I can’t play it safe after all these years. It’s the only kind of life I know. Nonetheless the ladder dream was so upsetting I was unable to go back to sleep.

Four observations about the just-popped teaser for Our Souls At Night, the Robert Redford-Jane Fonda romance that — surprise! — Netflix will now debut on 9.29, which is roughly two months earlier than their previously fiddled-with release date. (A month and a half ago I was told they were looking at sometime around Thanksgiving.) One, this moment says it all — it’s like the whole movie compressed into a single, silent 34-second scene. Two, a publicist who’s seen Our Souls At Night says it’s actually pretty good. (I know…trustworthy!) Three, Fonda looks great — a good 20 or 25 years younger. And four, Redford, Fonda and Netflix should man up and bring the film to Telluride right after the 9.1 Venice Film Festival debut. Incidentally: “You Must Remember This’s” Karina Longworth on Fonda and Jean Seberg.

Here’s a six-day-old MSNBC chat between Ari Melber, Mike Lupica and David Cay Johnston about Robert Mueller’s apparent interest in financial chicanery in the Trump-Russia probe. Maybe it’s Lupica being a trusted sportswriter and Johnston having drilled deeper than most into Trump’s history, but this discussion plus the Mueller grand jury thing gave me one of the best news-discussion stiffies I’ve had in a long time. “Good at finding financial needles in global commerce haystack”,,,go for it!

A little more than eight years ago Alice Cooper published “Alice Cooper, Golf Monster: A Rock ‘n’ Roller’s Life and 12 Steps to Becoming a Golf Addict.” But until today, the idea of Cooper hooking drives, wearing awful golf shoes, cruising the links, using a putter and trading quips with yaw-haw corporate golf guys never crossed my mind. Largely because I haven’t particularly cared what Cooper has been up to in a long time, no offense. But I respect what he had to say yesterday about poor Glen Campbell.

From “Wichita Lineman” Wikipage:

“Jimmy Webb‘s inspiration for the [‘Wichita Lineman’] lyric came while driving through Washita County in rural southwestern Oklahoma. At that time, many telephone companies were county-owned utilities, and their linemen were county employees. Heading westward on a straight road (arguably Country Road 152) into the setting sun, Webb drove past a seemingly endless line of telephone poles, each looking exactly the same as the last.

“Then, in the distance, he noticed the silhouette of a solitary lineman atop a pole. He described it as ‘the picture of loneliness’. Webb then ‘put himself atop that pole and put that phone in his hand’ as he considered what the lineman was saying into the receiver.

On 7.14 (or three and a half weeks ago) The Tracking Board‘s Jeff Sneider reported about Call Me By Your Name‘s Timothy Chalamet costarring with Elle Fanning in Woody Allen‘s next film, an Amazon production that will probably pop in late ’18. So today’s report from Variety‘s Brent Lang was basically about adding Selena Gomez to the cast. Lang should have offered a mild hat-tip to Sneider for getting it first — a little noblesse oblige never hurt anyone.

Suddenly a little movie that might have played like a 21st Century sequel to Mask or at least might have pushed the subtle button from time to time and therefore wouldn’t have felt like an emotional hustle…suddenly it feels more like a pep-rally cheer than anything else, as if the filmmakers (or at the very least the trailer guys) were terrified of suggesting that there might be a downish side to this story. Wonder is based on three relatively recent novels by R.J. Palacio. It’s about the journey of a young kid with a facial deformity (Jacob Tremblay) as he acclimates to school, and how his parents (Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson) and extended family help him along. The costars include Mandy Patinkin, Sonia Braga, Millie Davis, Izabela Vidovic, Danielle Rose Russell and Noah Jupe.

I found Jeff Bridges‘ performance as a craggy, booze-sipping writer in The Only Living Boy in New York more than a little irritating. Many of his mannerisms rubbed me the wrong way, but mostly it was Bridges’ seeming inability to speak plainly and without sounding affected that got to me. I began to hate the way he pronounced everything. Most people would say “I live in apartment B” and leave it at that, but Bridges has to say “I live in apartment BeeyeeEEE.”

I could understand Bridges just fine in The Big Lebowski, but over the last few years he seems to have had a rule about only performing while sucking on three or four throat losenges. Does he have a speech impediment? Does he have it written into his contract that he’s allowed to murmur and mutter and schnorr-schnorr his lines at every turn? Did he have to sip from a fucking glass or smoke a cigar in every damn scene of Marc Webb‘s film? And that infuriating beard stubble. And that Orson Welles-size pot belly.

How, by the way, does an alcoholic who has to struggle mightily to pronounce words in a semi-understandable fashion…how does a slurpy, slouching alcoholic manage to bang out a novel in record time? And how is it that Bridges, at age 68 or so, says he only fell in love once in his life? Once? And it was with the girlfriend or wife of a friend at that? He never fell in love once with somebody available?

Bridges worst offense is his pronunciation of Johanna. That’s the name of Kate Beckinsale‘s character who’s having a simultaneous affair with a dad (Pierce Brosnan) and his son (Callum Turner). Everyone knows that Bob Dylan‘s pronunciation in “Visions of Johanna” is the way to go. It’s JoHANahh, with the HAN rhyming with tin CAN or MAN or RAN as in “I ran down the street.” And yet Bridges, blurp-fuck that he is, insists on calling her Joh-HAHNN-aghhhhh with the HAHHN rhyming with Bonn, Germany.

I’m sorry, but the first thing that came to mind when I heard of Glen Campbell‘s passing was Al Pacino‘s rendering of “By The Time I Get to Phoenix” in Heat. I never really paid a lot of of attention to the guy, no offense, partly because I never liked Campbell’s right-leaning politics. He was a good singer, a skillful phraser. A Southwestern-style conservative going back to the ’70s, Campbell sang the national anthem at the 1980 Republican convention. But I’m truly sorry about anyone, rightie or leftie, having to deal with Al Z. Heimer. Condolences to Glen’s family, friends and fans. Yes, I always had a soft spot for “Wichita Lineman.”