“For many of us going to movies is like going to church. We go over and over and most of the time you don’t get very much, but it’s all worth it when a movie delivers the great beauty and the transcendence and the kiss of God, like from a great sermon. And that single ectstatic episode — that fix — is enough to keep us going back for years to come.”

(l. to r.) Michael Mann, Guillermo Del Toro and director of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Kerry Brougher prior to lastnight’s event — “In The Labyrinth: A Conversation with Guillermo Del Toro.”

This was the Guillermo del Toro quote that stayed with me as I shuffled out of last night’s discussion between the legendary director and interviewer Kerry Brougher at the AMPAS auditorium (i.e., the Samuel Goldwyn theatre).

The talk started out problematically with Brougher kissing Del Toro’s ass over and over, but eventually he let GDT have the floor and after that everything was fine. There is really no one more articulate, perceptive and spiritually imbued than Mr. Del Toro on the subject of film. Or any any subject. But we all know this. The discussion last for just over 90 minutes, and that was exactly right.

I saw GDT’s latest, Crimson Peak (Universal, 10.16), several weeks ago and will post my reaction next week sometime. It’s one of the most exquisitely painted and meticulously composed grand guignol orgies I’ve ever experienced, and I say that as someone who…well, who’s not as much into grand guignol orgies as others. Quite red, quite mad, quite sumptuous.

I’m sure that David O. Russell‘s Joy was research-screened tonight in Los Angeles, but beyond that I don’t know a thing. I can say that the response so far…let’s see, how to put this…is it okay if I say the response from…what, two or three guys is encouraging? I don’t know anyone. It’s obviously wiser to just wait and cool my jets, but here’s one Awards Watch guy (and please take this with a grain): “OMFG CRYING ON THE STREET! Career-best work from DOR and JLAW. Larson who? JLAW was giving Winter’s Bone-level intensity x1000, nothing like Rosalyn or Tiffany so bye h8ers and naysayers! She carried [the] film like a motherfucking champ, IMHO. It’s such a director’s film and I think a culmination of everything from DOR’s career so far plus more. IMHO majority of it is drama (not sure if that’s how they’ll campaign it), but my God…like it almost didn’t seem like a DOR film but at the same time, it’s so much so his film. It’s very weird. It wasn’t the final cut so a lot of sound mixing still needs to be done. But wowza indeed. Bob was good, Isabella was good, Ladd was ok (like Jackie Weaver SLP ok), Ramirez was good. Madsen was great, I thought.”

10:20 Update: A summary post from Award Watch‘s Eric Anderson — take it with a grain.

Thanks to Obscured Pictures‘ R.J. Millard for inviting Hollywood Elsewhere to attend the 2015 Middleburg Film Festival (10.22 thru 10.25). I’m going for three reasons. One, I haven’t visited rural Virginia in eons. Two, Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday tells me the festival is a “really nice hang.” And three, the films (including Spotlight, Meg Ryan‘s Ithaca, Son of Saul, Carol, Truth, 45 Years, Anomalisa) have been well chosen. They’re the consensus movies that anyone of taste and discretion who hasn’t attended the big fall festivals (Venice, Telluride, Toronto) would want to see. Yes, I’ve seen most of them but still.

A 10.27.13 Washington Post piece by Jen Chaney called Middleburg “a festival with the vibe of a hyper-miniature, horse country Park City, Utah…a really itty-bitty Cannes brightened by fall foliage instead of the glistening French Riviera.”

Why Middleburg? Because BET co-founder and billionaire Sheila Crump Johnson wants attention for the Salamander Resort, which she owns and which is located just outside of town. Hosting a bunch of film people (including journalist freeloaders like myself) is a good way of attracting business by selling people on the idea of Middleburg being a moneyed, honeyed, cultured, quasi-hip destination for people who can, you know, afford it.

Time Out: “Can you imagine doing another Bond movie?” Daniel Craig: “Now? I’d rather break this glass and slash my wrists. No, not at the moment. Not at all. That’s fine. I’m over it at the moment. We’re done. All I want to do is move on.” Time Out: “You want to move on from Bond for good?” Craig: ‘I haven’t given it any thought. For at least a year or two, I just don’t want to think about it. I don’t know what the next step is. I’ve no idea. Not because I’m trying to be cagey. Who the fuck knows? At the moment, we’ve done it. I’m not in discussion with anybody about anything. If I did another Bond movie, it would only be for the money.”

I was almost flabbergasted to discover that Ken Russell‘s Women in Love (’69) still has no Bluray and isn’t streamable on high-def. I don’t know what the hang-up is, but this is obviously a prime candidate for the Criterion or Kino treatment. This is a major landmark in the annals of sensuous cinema (the nude wrestling and fig-eating scenes alone) and one of the most anguished portrayals of the sadnesses and frustrations that plague so many relationships and marriages. One of the most exquisitely designed, profoundly transporting period films ever made. D.H. Lawrence‘s novel adapted by Larry Kramer (yes, the Larry Kramer) and co-produced by Kramer and Martin Rosen. Arguably contains the greatest screen performances ever by Alan Bates, Glenda Jackson and Oliver Reed. (Jennie Linden, who quit acting, is also quite memorable.) Photographed by Billy Williams (Sunday Bloody Sunday, Gandhi, The Wind and the Lion). I last complained about the absence of a high-def version in February 2014, and I will most likely complain again 20 months from now if the situations remains static.

A guy who attended a 9.15 DGA research screening of Quentin Tarantino‘s The Hateful Eight has told me a few more things. I was particularly pleased to hear that in addition to being projected in old-fashioned Ultra Panavision 70 (2.76 to 1) that The Hateful Eight, which ran just over three hours, will be shown with an overture and an intermission in the film’s “roadshow” engagements, which will number about 100 screens.

I won’t share the guy’s opinion of the film except to say he’s calling it “an Agatha Christie mystery mixed with a western and filtered through QT.” I can also divulge that the sex scene mentioned yesterday doesn’t involve Jennifer Jason Leigh but Samuel L. Jackson. That’s all I’m going to say.

One comment: “During the post-screening q & a Tarantino was confronted by an African-American audience member about [what the questioner felt was an] excessive use of the n-word. I could be wrong but this flick has the most n-bombs of all his movies, and its frequency is used as a source of humor. But in this hyper-sensitive, p.c. flash mob environment we currently live in I could see this as being a real problem for Tarantino this time around.

I don’t know about you but I literally fainted an hour ago when I read that Woody Allen has gone digital for his latest film. I fell over backwards in my chair and hit my head on a bookshelf and passed out for 45 minutes. I only just woke up ten minutes ago. All because it was confirmed today that Allen and dp Vittorio Storaro are using Sony’s CineAlta F65 camera to capture Allen’s latest, a 1930s-era dramedy that began shooting Los Angeles in mid August. The film will be mastered in 4K. Storaro quote: “I had seen that the Sony F65 was capable of recording beautiful images in 4K and 16 bit-color depth in 2:1, which is my favorite [aspect ratio]. So when Woody called me this year asking me to be the cinematographer of his new film, my decision was already made. I convinced him to record the film in digital, so we can begin our journey together in the digital world.”

Filmscalpel‘s Vimeo essay on the Oedipal undercurrents in Chinatown is intriguing as far as it goes, but what caught my attention is the female narrator’s use of the term “Chinaman.” In strict p.c. terms this is like saying “Oriental.” The business-as-usual response would be for a p.c. lynch mob to come down on Vimeo like a ton of bricks and demand that the narrator be tarred and feathered and run out of town. I’m presuming that the writer got into the flow of the film and the 1930s period flavor and the personality of J.J. Gittes and the word “Chinaman” just popped out — an innocent blunder. Note: It was actually a linguistic misunderstanding due to the author of the piece being Dutch and raised in Europe and being unfamiliar with the incorrectness of the term. [See statement below.]

My heart skips a beat whenever someone makes a mistake along these lines or, better yet, deliberately ignores or taunts the p.c. mob. Like Chrissie Hynde, for example, who became irate during yesterday’s interview with NPR’s David Greene, or more precisely because of Greene’s needling questions about how she used the wrong words in telling that story about being sexually ravaged by a group of bikers when she was 21. She described the p.c. crowd as a kind of “lynch mob.”

Email from David of Filmscalpel: “I just saw your blogpost on my Chinatown video essay and wanted to clear a few things up. I posted the video over a week ago, and only got positive feedback. Until two days ago, that is, when somebody posted a short comment: “She said chinaman” (sic). This prompted me to look into the term, for indeed I had written it in the text without knowing of its contested stature in U.S. English.

“I’m not American. My native language is Dutch, and I am born and raised in Europe. English is my third language, in fact. Because of my bad accent, I got a female to record that narration for me (she is not to blame however — she just read what I gave her).

How slow on the pickup do you have to be to not understand that consonants often get lost in the shuffle on a cell-phone call, and that phonetic spellings are a natural remedy when you’re conveying a name or proper noun with a few “e”-sounds? What kind of a gorilla brain doesn’t realize that “t” sounds like “d”,”e”, “p”, “b”,”g” and even “v” or “c” if your English is compromised by a heavy Asian or Latin accent? Every time I tell someone my email address I always say “g as in George, r as in robert, u as in uncle, v as in victor,” etc. Maybe they don’t need to hear the phonetic but it can’t hurt. How many times during the tens of thousands of cellular calls I’ve made over the last 25 or so years has a caller offered a phonetic spelling? Less than 20 or 25 times, I would say, or once a year. I almost always have to say “would you please spell that phonetically?” They never offer this — the concept of “e” letters sounding all but interchangeable has never penetrated their membrane.

Anyone can assemble a bunch of clips from Stanley Kubrick‘s films and produce some kind of alluring mood riff. I’ve probably watched at least 40 or 50 impressionistic essays along these lines. But this month-old montage by a Canadian dude who calls himself Somerset VII really stands out. Tell me I’m wrong.

“A film is — or should be — more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning…all that comes later.” — Stanley Kubrick.

Every now and then The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg will send me a link to one of his articles or interviews. Which I definitely appreciate as Scott’s stuff is always well-phrased and I’m always looking for interesting material to re-post. An hour ago he sent me a just-posted discussion with The Martian director Ridley Scott. A nice one, actually. But I have concerns. My reply: “Thanks, Scott. I’m listening to the mp3 now — good stuff, relaxed vibe, very candid Ridley. But I really do feel that I have to do my part to nip this ‘Martian for Best Picture’ stuff in the bud. I don’t agree with it. You know, I know and Ridley definitely knows that it’s a first-class popcorn movie, and as such it simply doesn’t belong in the Best Picture conversation. But good work.”