31 years ago I worked on Tim Burton‘s Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (’85) under my immediate publicist employers, Bobby Zarem and Dick Delson. The guy we spoke with the most was producer Robert Shapiro (i.e., not the O.J guy…another one). I never spoke with Burton or Pee-Wee (i.e., Paul Reubens) but Zarem came up with a notion of trying to lure big-name celebrities to do walk-on cameos in the film….gratis. A letter went out asking 35 or 40 celebs to consider the idea; in each envelope was a hand-written note from Reubens. I was told to fold and lick each envelope and then personally deliver them over a weekend, and so I was given the personal addresses of Jack Nicholson, Johnny Carson, Ali McGraw, et. al. I have to admit that driving around and getting through the security gates and visiting these royal abodes (especially Nicholson’s pad) was pretty cool.

I noticed a month or so ago that the sound is a half-second late when I’m watching domestic Blurays. That’s the fault of either (a) my Oppo BDP-93 Bluray player or (b) the sound settings on my Samsung 60″ plasma or (c) the Samsung sound bar, which has an AV synch button that allows you to toggle forward or backward. An Oppo tech guy told me I can’t just reset the sound — I have to reset the whole player, which means recalibrating all the settings. He said that before that happens I might want to fiddle around with the sound bar synch button, and so I did. This caused an infuriating sound echo effect that I can’t rid of. I became so furious at the Oppo guy and the Big Sleep Bluray and Humphrey Bogart and…you know, life in general that I started calling around for a tech guy who could come in and restore everything. Yes, this is analogous to calling AAA to change a flat tire. Yes, I just want the agony to stop. This situation has consumed more than three hours of my time, and the problem is nowhere close to being solved. Update: I solved it.

Three things are likely to happen in response to the death of Chief Justice Scalia. (1) President Obama will nominate a replacement , (2) the Republican-controlled Senate, in defiance of the Constitution and the will of the 2012 presidential electorate, will refuse to examine or vote on the nominee, and (3) the Senate will go into recess. Could President Obama then install his nominee during said recess? Only, in the just-posted view of Newsweek‘s Lyle Deniston, “if the Senate is taking a recess lasting longer than three days, and does not come in from time to time during that recess to take some minimal legislative action. Both of those circumstances would be entirely within the Senate’s authority.

“The bottom line is that, if President Obama is to successfully name a new Supreme Court Justice, he will have to run the gauntlet of the Republican-controlled Senate, and prevail there. The only real chance of that [happening is] if he picks a nominee so universally admired that it would be too embarrassing for the Senate not to respond.”

CNN’s Dana Bash: Do you think that…do you think that if Republicans continue down this road, that they say they’re not going to bring up whomever the nominee is for a vote, would you recommend to the president a recess appointment?

Se. Patrick Leahy: I don’t even think we’re there. I think the president — and I have talked to the White House last night — I think the president has to nominate somebody, nominate a qualified person, a highly qualified person.

Bash: But would you rule…would you rule it out if things don’t change the way they are now?

Blurays of black-and-white films of 1940s can look wonderful — Out of the Past, Laura, the 2008 Casablanca Bluray (i.e., not the horribly grainstormed 70th anniversary version), Criterion’s Red River, TCM’s Only Angels Have Wings (okay, late ’30s), Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Alas, the new Big Sleep Bluray is nowhere near as handsome or satisfying as any of these.

This latest version of Howard Hawks‘ 1946 noir looks okay but not significantly better, in my opinion, than any TCM broadcast version or how the 16-year-old, 480p Warner Home Video DVD looked when you played it on your 700-pound 32″ Sony flatscreen. I wanted my Bluray “bump” and this puppy didn’t give it up. I was watching it like Peggy Lee….”Is that all there is, my friend?”

The Big Sleep Bluray (which streets on 2.23) is sourced from a wetgate fine-grain master, which is indistinguishable from the original camera negative, I’m told. A restoration guy tells me it’s “a new scan, properly color-timed…you may not like the dark aspects and the shadows but this is what The Big Sleep looks like. It’s a noir. And every review so far has been a rave. I’ve seen excellent prints of The Big Sleep and this, to my eyes, looks absolutely glorious.”

No — it’s not glorious. It’s just..well, pretty good. It doesn’t look remastered to me at all. Detailed but not that detailed. Some shots look excellent but they’re in the minority. Yes, it’s delivering greater density and tonal improvements and textural detail to some extent but it certainly doesn’t have that reharvested look. It doesn’t deliver anything close to the crisp, satiny textures of that wonderful Out Of The Past Bluray. A lot of it is very handsome but it generally feels too dark and muddy and curiously shadowed. I felt as if a layer of scrim or gauze was hanging over it at times.

I was riveted by the grand Hamilton number on last night’s Grammy awards. Immediately converted, floored. I’d like to see it when I hit New York in May on my way to Cannes, but I’m hearing tickets are all but impossible to acquire. Hats off and in the air for Lin-Manuel Miranda, author of the book, music and lyrics who also plays Alexander Hamilton. Leslie Odom, Jr. (Aaron Burr), Daveed Diggs, Christopher Jackson, Renée Elise Goldsberry, etc. Twitter went double-triple-quadruple crazy over Kendrick Lamar‘s “To Pimp A Butterfly” jumpin’ jailhouse-in-blacklight performance. I was going “uh-huh, yup, okay, that was striking, yep…fine.” Lady Gagg‘s David Bowie tribute…yeah, sure, pretty good.

These came today in a box. Maybe I’ll suffer through Deadpool tomorrow instead. Yes, the Big Sleep Bluray contains the 1945 version.

Now that the Oscar race is more or less over and it’s just a waiting game between now and February 28th, I’m reviewing the award-season stories and reviews that I’m modestly proud of for…well, which may have exerted a small measure of influence upon the conversation. The slamdunk Best Picture assurance of Spotlight when it popped in Telluride, the heightening of interest among under-40 urban women in seeing The Revenant, the respectful downgradings of Bridge of Spies‘ Mark Rylance and Black Mass‘s Joel Edgerton, the realization that Eddie Redmayne‘s chances of winning a Best Actor Oscar for his The Danish Girl performance were toast, and the obvious surge of support for his costar, Alicia Vikander.

In a 2.15 article about last night’s BAFTA awards (“How the BAFTA Winners Do and Don’t Foretell the Oscars”), N.Y. Times Oscar-season columnist Cara Buckley says the following: “Oh, and The Revenant picked up five awards including Best Picture, Director (Alejandro G. Inarritu) and Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), which may or may not mean anything for the Oscars because everything is haywire this season.” No, wrong, no longer haywire — it’s over. Fairly or unfairly, advise and consent of the Movie Godz or not, it’s The Revenant, The Revenant, The Revenant…Best Picture, Director, Actor, Cinematographer, etc. My current Gold Derby picks.

Cameron Crowe‘s Roadies doesn’t launch for another four and a half months (Showtime, 6.26) but it feels…well, like it came from the same well as Crowe’s autobiographical Almost Famous (’00), his last fully successful and popular film. My heart goes out to Crowe — a good guy who’s been through a kind of career nightmare over the last decade. I truly want him to find his way out of the dark forest. Exec produced by J.J. Abrams and My So-Called Life creator Winnie Holzman, the series will focus on the grunts and technicians — Luke Wilson, Carla Gugino, Imogen Poots, Rafe Spall, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Luis Guzman — who assemble the stage, work the laser light show, keep the parts greased and the whole rock-band caravan rolling and gassed up with good air pressure in the tires. Which reminds me: I can’t find a decent clip of that superb Jimmy Fallon scene in Almost Famous when he explains to the band why they need him — i.e., “Your manager needs a manager…if you think Mick Jagger is still going to be prancing around at 50, you’re sadly mistaken.”

I sat through Martin Scorsese‘s two-hour Vinyl pilot last night, and I’m sorry, man, but it didn’t quite cut it for me. Here and there, yes, but overall no. The greatest rock music era was not the glitter-trash early ’70s but the mythical explosion-and-transformation period between ’64 and ’68 — the arc that began with Motown, early British invasion (Beatles, Stones, Kinks, etc.), schmaltz and bubble-gum succumbing or getting swallowed or pushed aside by Bob Dylan and folk rock finessings and then the Yardbirds and the Velvet Underground and early-to-advanced psychedelia. (And don’t forget the Boxtops!)

I’m also unable to believe in a loud, crude, non-levitational guy named Richie Finestra (Bobby Cannavale) as a kind of electric talent-spotting, trend-spotting savant. Cannavale has been playing none-too-bright New Jersey goombah types for too long to attempt this kind of transition, and I just didn’t care what happened to him or what he lucked into or what new rock group is about to restore his faith in rock ‘n’ roll. I don’t mean to sound harsh or dismissive but I didn’t like or care about anyone…fuck ’em all.

Vinyl suffers from way too much sweat, cocaine, awful clothing, booze from the bottle, shouting, guns, threats, lying and a general lack of recognizable human behavior. I don’t want or need this shit in my head. I’ll stay with it for another episode or two, but I’m not happy, I’m tellin’ ya.

“Cocaine Is Boring. Jack Daniel’s Is Boring” — posted on 11.17.15: I know a little something about the trials of a rock band (having been a mediocre drummer in my early 20s in a not-half-bad blues rock group called the Sludge Brothers) and the difficulties of creating a sound that works and recording it the right way and getting the right gigs, etc. And yet Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger‘s Vinyl, to go by this trailer and previous teasers, seems uninterested in the brick-and-mortar stuff. It looks like just another bacchanalian coke-and-booze Satyricon thing. Self-destruction (or dangerously flirting with same) by way of drugs and booze is not interesting.

With Robert Eggers‘ The Witch finally opening this coming weekend (2.19), or 13 months after its debut at the 2015 Sundance Film festival, here’s a repost: “This is easily the most unsettling and sophisticated nightmare film since The Babadook. That’s a roundabout way of saying that the dolts who pay to see the usual horror bullshit will probably avoid it to some extent. Insensitive, all-but-clueless people tend to favor insensitive, all-but-clueless movies, and I’m sorry but The Witch is mostly too good for them — too subterranean, too otherworldly, too scrupulous in its avoidance of cliches. And because it goes for chills and creeps rather than shock and gore.

This is the fate of all exceptional, extra-good horror flicks — they must suffer rejection by morons. Just ask Jennifer Kent.

This little creeper (which was projected last night at a 1.66:1 aspect ratio!) is set on an isolated farm in 17th Century New England, when the lore of witches and sorcery was at an all-time high. I was seriously impressed by the historical authenticity and the complete submission to the superstitious mythology of evil in the early 1600s and the panicky mindset of those God-fearing Puritans who completely bought the notion that demonic evil was absolutely manifest and waiting in the thicket. And I was entranced by Eggers’ slowburn strategy, which finally pays off in spades during the final 25 to 30 minutes. And I was fascinated at the allusions to sexuality as a kind of budding demon seed.

The focus is on a farming family of seven — a strong, devout father with a deep resonant voice (Ralph Ineson), a wiry, agitated, asexual mother with a mostly impenetrable accent (Kate Dickie), an intelligent and very hot mid-teen daughter (Anya Taylor-Joy), a younger brother disturbed by sensual stirrings (Harvey Scrimshaw), two toddlers (Ellie Grainger, Lucas Dawson) and an infant — and one of the most fearsome and persistent threats, never acted upon or spoken of but constantly flowing in the blood, is the animal energy of sex.