Roughly two weeks before the 20th Academy Award ceremony at the Shrine Auditorium on March 20, 1948, a Harper‘s article by Raymond Chandler appeared (or was filed) about the Oscars — the cultural legacy, Chandler’s belief in the artistic potential of films, his personal experience at a previous ceremony, etc. Chandler, on the verge of his 60th birthday, had co-written Double Indemnity with Billy Wilder five years previously; two years hence he would work unhappily with Alfred Hitchcock (i.e., “that fat bastard”) on Strangers on a Train. Here’s an excerpt:

About 40% into the trailer Gyorgy Ligeti‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey music kicks in. (A little lazy, no?) The script openly references 1954 as the year when “something was unleashed” (or words to that effect), which of course is the year when the original Gojira opened in Japan. The seawater effects are the highlights, I think. So Mr. Godzilla attacks New York and San Francisco? Why not some smaller cities? Why not Savannah, New Orleans, Tampa or Portland? Why not Corpus Christi?

Web/graphic designer Christian Annyas has today posted a visual history showing the evolution of the Warner Bros. logo over the last 90 years. The first Warner Bros. studio opened on Sunset Boulevard in 1918. But it wasn’t until 4.4.23 when Warner Brothers Pictures was formally incorporated. It’s ironic that 70 to 80 years ago Warner Bros. was known as the studio that specialized in tough, socially realistic movies (particularly in the 1930s about gangsters and underdogs and working-class characters). What is Warner Bros. known for today, for the most part? Aside from the Oscar-nominated Gravity and Her, it mainly churns out corporate superhero CG-driven fantasy-franchise films aimed at GenX and GenY submentals.

Ken Russsell‘s Women in Love (’69), indisputably his greatest film, can only be seen via a MGM Home Video DVD issued in 2003 and via occasional showings on TCM. There’s no Bluray, and no high-def streaming via Vudu, Netflix or Hulu Plus. There should be. The cinematography by Billy Williams (Gandhi, On Golden Pond) demands a meticulous high-def remastering. Women in Love is one of the most sensual films ever made about men, woman and relationships (and I’m not just talking about nude wrestling scene between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates), and one of the most anguished in portraying the sadnesses and frustrations that plague so many relationships and marriages. It’s also one of the first mainstream films to really explore and dramatize the lives and longings of free-spirited, semi-emancipated 20th Century women (i.e., Glenda Jackson‘s Isadora Duncan-like Gudrun and Jennie Linden‘s somewhat more conservative Ursula) in a historical context.

Boris Kachka‘s New York article about…well, a portion of the Los Angeles Oscar-blogging community (myself, Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Gold Derby‘s Tom O’Neil, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg and Deadline‘s Pete Hammond) posted this morning. Like I said yesterday I have a beef or two but it’s mostly an honest, comprehensively reported, smoothly written thing. Boris could have been a little kinder, a little more complimentary…but I guess I can live with it. For the most part he played it straight and fair.

It seems that directors are largely against the idea of actors carrying umbrellas during rainstorm scenes. The reasons seem simple enough. It’s bothersome to frame an actor carrying an umbrella as the camera would have to shoot up from a slightly lower angle, and it’s difficult to light an actor carrying an umbrella without an artificial-looking glow. It strongly argues with reality, but that’s pretty much the Hollywood rule — no umbrellas unless it’s Alfred Hitchcock shooting the Amsterdam assassination scene in Foreign Correspondent. Carey Mulligan gets throughly soaked as she walks in the rain in An Education, but nobody is indifferent to this in real life. If I don’t have an umbrella I pull my jacket over my head or I cover my head with a newspaper, and I crouch down and run.

On 2.21 I reported that Criterion’s forthcoming Red River Bluray will contain two versions of Howard Hawks’ 1948 classic western — the 127-minute vocally-narrated-by-Walter Brennan version, which few have seen, along with the widely seen 133-minute book-journal version which was used for last fall’s Masters of Cinema Bluray. The differences between the versions are spelled out in some detail in Todd McCarthy‘s Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood.

Here are excerpts, found on pages 441 and 442:

“More perplexing is the question of why two distinct versions of Red River were made — one in which a written chronicle entitled Early Tales of Texas serves to connect the chapters in this highly episodic film, another in which voice-over narration by Walter Brennan‘s character, Nadine Groot, bridges the gaps in time and place.

“The diary version runs seven and a half minutes longer. In addition to cutting the shots of the pages, [the narrated version trims] include a lengthy description by Cherry Valance (John Ireland) of a beautiful woman who told him about the railroad to Abilene and a scene showing nervousness on the part of Matthew Garth (Montgomery Clift) as Dunson is catching up to him. There are also differences in the musical score, with the diary version containing more vocalizing than the voice-over version.

A little more than two years ago Warren Beatty‘s Howard Hughes movie, which he’d been developing since the early ’80s and preparing in his usual meticulous way for God knows how many years, seemed to fall apart. A few months before this Beatty biographer Peter Biskind discussed the history of the Hughes project with Vanity Fair‘s Bruce Handy, and the only thing clear was that Beatty was moving at his usual snail’s pace. But now Beatty is actually shooting the Hughes film, according to Deadline‘s Anita Busch, with Alden Ehrenreich and Lily Collins costarring with Beatty as an elderly Hughes. (Biskind/Handy observed that Beatty probably regards Hughes as a kindred spirit, certainly in terms of their “control freak” personalities.) Busch reports that billionaires Ron Burkle and Steve Bing, Windsor Media’s Terry Semel, Arnon Milchan’s New Regency and James Packer’s and Brett Ratner’s RatPac Entertainment are financing the project to the tune of $27.6 million. I don’t know if that’s the whole budget, but $27.6 million is much lower than a 2011 ballpark budget mentioned by The Hollywood Reporter‘s Borys Kit and Gary Baum, between $42 and $47 million.

Mike Judge‘s Silicon Valley series (HBO, eight episodes, debuting 4.6) takes place in contemporary times, but some of the hair styles look like the ’70s or early ’80s. The atmosphere and the dialogue sound right. “Partially inspired by Judge’s own experiences as a Silicon Valley engineer in the late ’80s,” etc. Thomas Middleditch, T.J. Miller, Martin Starr, Kumail Nanjiani, Josh Brener, Matt Ross and Christopher Evan Welch.

I have one tiny criticism of Leonardo DiCaprio‘s brilliant performance in The Wolf of Wall Street. Which is really a criticism of Martin Scorsese‘s direction, to be fair about it. I’ve been telling myself it’s not important, but I have to spit it out. In one of the his earliest scenes (included below) DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort casually mentions all the various drugs he takes to get through the day. In the middle of the shpiel he takes a quick slurp of orange juice and throws the glass in the direction of the shrubbery behind him. (But not far enough — we hear it break upon the pavement.) I just can’t buy tossing the glass. It’s too anarchic, too coarse. A guy like Belfort wouldn’t behave like a zoo gorilla in front of his chauffeur. In front of his drugged-up Stratton-Oakmont pals, perhaps, but not the help. Besides nobody smashes a glass of orange juice in front of their own home on their way to work. It’s a bullshit move.

Boris Kachka‘s New York piece about our Oscar blogging demimonde, “For Their Consideration”, will be online Tuesday morning around 8 am Eastern. It’s now available via New York‘s iPad app and also at L.A. newsstands. I bought a copy this morning around 7 am. I have my arguments with this and that portion but it’s a relatively fair-minded, well-honed, smoothly written piece. Kachka is a very good writer. He quoted me honestly. It says that a lot of people on my side of the fence have put me down, but in my mind these people are odious, tip-toeing one-eyed jacks. I basically come off as a sober but eccentric sui generis transparent sort with some minor but tolerable flaws. Boris didn’t give me credit for being a relentless workhorse but I guess that speaks for itself. Kachka says that in early 2013 I “predicted glory for Saving Mr. Banks on the basis of a leaked script alone”; in fact the title of that piece was “If Saving Mr. Banks Is As Good As The Script” — the operative term was “if.” The New York proofreader failed to correct the spelling of Hennessy cognac — the print edition of the article spells it “Hennessey” but that’ll be fixed online and on the iPad version soon. David Poland, Steve Pond and Kris Tapley are mentioned once and that’s all; I’m not recalling that Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson is mentioned at all. It’s basically about Sasha Stone, Tom O’Neil, Scott Feinberg, Pete Hammond and myself. Nikki Finke is quoted and she sounds like a snitty, sour-attitude type. I’ll post a more thorough response tomorrow morning or very late tonight.

Harold Ramis, the director and co-writer of Groundhog Day, one of the greatest, funniest and most profoundly spiritual, philosophically robust comedies ever made, has left the earth at age 69. Everything that Ramis did from his birth on 11.21.44 until be began to develop and prepare for Groundhog Day was Phase One, and everything that came after Groundhog Day was Phase Two. Ramis never did anything better than make Groundhog Day, and he didn’t need to. His life was fulfilled by this 1993 film. Really. And not everyone realized this right away. I did but a lot of people didn’t.