Until last night I’d never seen the Studio Canal Bluray of Carol Reed‘s The Third Man (’49). Yes, it’s a somewhat darker, de-grained, scrubbed-down, somewhat less specific version, okay, but it has enough detail for me, and it’s certainly a damn sight preferable to that notorious 2009 Criterion Bluay, which I bought and panned back in early ’09. The latter disappeared from circulation a long time ago.

Frame capture from my just-purchased Studio Canal Bluray.

From the Criterion Bluray

Producer friend: “Tom Hiddleston is looking like a real movie star. He’s also a terrific actor and one film away from an Oscar shortlist. Next James Bond?” Me: “Hiddleston is a first-rate actor with an icy-cool gravitas, but what about the brawn? There’s something a bit geeky and scarecrow about him.” Producer: “London rumor mill says that Hiddleston’s on the shortlist for the next Bond. And he’s said he’d love to do it. And he’s sexy. Pierce Brosnan was lean also but it worked.” Me: “Okay but Hiddleston is a long throw from the gold-standard Sean Connery model.” Producer: “Agree, but the definition of sexy for Bond isn’t just all muscle. Hiddleston is taking off in the leading man category. If Benedict Cumberpatch is a huge sex symbol (that one I really don’t get — wonderful actor but not sexy at all) then Hiddleston is next.”

Posted on 5.24.15, following the end of last year’s Cannes Film Festival: “Giving the Palme d’Or to Jacques Audiard‘s respectable but far-from-stellar Dheepan was a huge forehead-slapper. Laszlo Nemes‘ Son of Saul, which won the second-place Grand Prix award, would have been a far more deserving recipient; ditto Todd Haynes‘ Carol, which many fell to their knees over. (A producer pal: ‘Every year the Cannes critics rave about a film like Carol, so then the Jury goes out of its way to not to give it a prize. It’s as if they have to defy the pure merit of it all just so as to not appear ‘populist.’)

“I’m telling you that nobody and I mean nobody expected Dheepan to win anything, much less the Palme d’Or. In this sense it’s fair to say that the Cannes Jury (chaired by Joel and Ethan Coen) was completely divorced from a perceptual reality shared by nearly every journalist I talked to during the festival. Nobody even fantasized about Dheepan emerging as the Big Winner…nobody.

Journalists: “Dheepan is easily the least distinguished of Audiard’s last three films — a good or even a pretty good film but far from exceptional. At best a modest achievement.” Ethan Coen: ‘[The jury’s reaction to Dheepan] was swift…everybody had an enthusiasm for it. To some degree or another we all thought it was a very beautiful movie. We’re different people, some people had greater enthusiasms for other things or lesser, but in terms of this movie, everybody had some level of excitement, some high level of excitement and enthusiasm for it.’ There was no overlap here.

Everybody Wants Some! is the only new film of consequence out there. God’s Not Dead 2..Christian garbage. Meet the Blacks…phffft. I was never invited to a screening of The Dark Horse (Maori speed chess) and probably wouldn’t have attended if I had been. The Girl In The Photographs (slasher), Kill Me, Deadly, Kill Your Friends, etc. I wanted to see Don Cheadle‘s Miles Ahead, and I offer no excuse for failing to do so except that I tried. Natural Born Pranksters, Next Time I’ll Aim for the Heart, Standing Tall…meh.

Rebecca Miller‘s Maggie’s Plan (Sony Pictures Classics, 5.20) is an intelligent, nicely honed, reasonably decent romantic triangle dramedy with Greta Gerwig, Ethan Hawke and Julianne Moore. It was widely reviewed during last January’s Sundance Film Festival, resulting in a combined 75.5% rating from Rotten Tomatoes (73%) and Metacritic (78%). I didn’t love it but it’s okay. It moves along, hangs together, does the job. I looked at my watch two or three times but I never covered my faced with hands or moaned or any of that other stuff.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that I can never again consider the idea of seeing Ethan Hawke in a film without this image coming to mind. Fairly or unfairly he’s suddenly become an icon for the self-absorbed guy who licks his fingers after he eats.

I won’t burden you with the tangled particulars, but Maggie’s Plan is about a faintly neurotic academic type (Gerwig) and a somewhat older academic and would-be novelist (Hawke) falling in love and deciding to cohabit and have a kid after he leaves his former wife (Moore), a needles-and-pins controlling bitch type with whom he has two older kids. The second half is about Gerwig deciding to disengage from Hawke by way of a sly manipulative scheme when she realizes he’s not really in love with her and is more or less using her because she’s a great organizer-assistant type.

Why did I leave 7 or 8 minutes before it ended? Because I suffered an intense visceral reaction when Hawke licked his sticky, greasy, sauce-covered fingers for the third time.

“As much as I hate to spoil any movie’s ending in a review, I have to do so here because I was so gobsmacked and disgusted when it happened. The audience I was with shared my profound disappointment and there was actually a small riot in the IMAX theater, with seats being torn out of the floor and flung at the screen. We didn’t even get to see the end credits stinger because by then the riot police had shown up to wrestle angry comic book fans in costumes to the ground in one of the most horrendous sights I’ve ever seen (well, after this movie, of course). I have a feeling that reaction will be fairly common come May 6th. Theaters should start hiring security guards now. It’ll be a bloodbath.” — from imaginative 4.1.16 High Def Digest review of Captain America: Civil War by Phil Brown.

A producer friend went to the premiere of Ben Falcone and Melissa McCarthy‘s The Boss (Universal, 4.8) last Monday night in Westwood: “Very physical comedy. McCarthy is hilarious. One-woman show. They go over the top in a knock-down, drag-out brawl in the street between two girl scout troops, but you can’t help but laugh at the audacity. Audience laughed all the way through. A big hit.” Once again HE is offering respect to the newly-svelte McCarthy for her weight loss — still chubby and funny but no longer a Jabba. Hats off.

The headline of a 3.31 New York article by Jonathan Chait flat-out says that Republican intransigence about climate change (a significant percentage of Republican legislators and voters are still in denial mode and/or downplaying the data as much as possible) will trigger a “worldwide catastrophe” if these monkeys continue to be put in positions of responsibility by voters. And God forbid that a Republican denialist or proscrastinator (i.e., another Dubya) gets into the White House.

Chait’s piece leans heavily on a 3.30 N.Y. Times story by Justin Gillis (“Climate Model Predicts West Antarctic Ice Sheet Could Melt Rapidly“) which contains the following, as summarized by Chait:

“In reality, the Manhattan-as-underwater-theme-park scenario remains very much in play. The latest modeling projects a sea rise of five to six feet by the end of the century, with a sea-level rise of a foot per decade after that.”

Somehow this new data hadn’t quite gotten through to me. It basically means that the East River and the Hudson will have begun to seep onto Manhattan streets by the time Jett’s grandchildren (he’s getting married next year) have reached their 30s, and certainly by the time his great-grandchildren are running around.

A September 2013 article by National Geographic‘s Tim Folder (“Rising Seas”) stated that in 2006 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted a maximum of 23 inches of sea-level rise by the end of this century.

I’ve said many times that any and all Asian martial-arts films (past, present, future) are anathema to me, and that I will never, ever sit through another one. There are few things in life that I am more resolute about. I’m also determined to never, ever see (a) Arthur Hiller‘s 1972 adaptation of Man of La Mancha with a singing-dubbed Peter O’Toole and Sophia Loren (yeccch), (b) Peter Hunt‘s 1776, the 1972 adaptation of the 1969 Broadway musical that costarred William Daniels, Howard Da Silva, John Cullum, Ken Howard and Blythe Danner (uggh); (c) Ken Hughes‘ Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang (overly precious from a distance), (d) Richard Fleischer’s Dr. Doolittle (’67) with Rex Harrison, and (e) Blake Edwards’ Darling Lili (’70) with Julie Andrews and Rock Hudson. I am in a state of absolutely serene acceptance about never seeing these five, and I’m fairly sure I could easily think of another 40 or 50 if you give me an hour or so.

Please list your never-see-’ems with parenthetical explanations if you care to share.

I chuckled last night at Andrew Kevin Walker‘s “Noxin” tweet, but it also nudged me on some level. Today I decided to rent an HDX Vudu stream of Nixon (’95), which I respected but didn’t exactly love when I first saw it 20-plus years ago. Which is why I haven’t seen it since. But this weekend I will, all three hours and 12 minutes of it. Hunkering down.

From Oliver Stone’s 3.30 Huffpost essay in support of Bernie Sanders: “I’ve been in deep despair these last few months about our political landscape. [Because] it’s clear that the die is cast and that Hillary Clinton will win — that is, if you believe in numbers and materialism. But I don’t, not completely.

“[We] need to read to understand how difficult a situation we’ll be in if we continue with a harder-line version of Obama. Clinton has effectively closed the door on peace, blasting both the Palestinian peace process and the Russians in the same week. NATO is her god — the best thing the ‘exceptional’ U.S. has to export in this new ‘American Century.’

“But who set this policy and who controls this country? Clinton’s point of view is steeped in the traditional post-World War II, Atlanticist, NATO-domination of the universe. It’s set in stone. No president it seems, no democratic vote, no dissenting media can alter this. We’re going to be in border, resource, and forever wars for the next 10, 20, 100 years, until Trump (whom our shadow government will never allow to exercise power) actually said, in his straight way of talking, ‘our cities go bust.’

“Our media has been drained and made callous by war, increasingly sensationalized by TV, looking for the next high in the next headline, the more outrageous the better. Modesty in American politics is dead — it’s better to be sensational.

Yesterday morning I was almost convinced that my agonizing sound-synch issues had been solved by using an HDMI cord to connect my Sony sound bar to the ARC (Audio Return Channel) option instead of a standard cable connecting the Digital Audio Output (located at the rear of any high-def TV) to the sound bar. Well, it worked for about a day and then the shit returned. [Check the video below — the sound is just a micro-second late.] I literally fell to my knees and began to weep when I realized the monster was back. Tears of rage.

John Tillett of INC Technologies had suggested installing a sophisticated Marantz system that would definitely eliminate the problem, he said, but it would have set me back $1200. He also mentioned returning the current Sony 65-inch 4k (XBR 850C) and replacing it with a Sony XBR65X930C which has built-in speakers on the side and theoretically can’t deliver out-of-synch sound. So I did that yesterday (cost: $500) while purchasing the $200 Sony sub-woofer (SWFBR100) that goes with it.

The 930C newbie (my third purchase within a four-week period) arrives on Sunday and the current one (850C) wll exit. I’ve been bled dry by this problem. I just want it to stop.