A little less than eight years ago I posted a qualified rave about Michael Mann‘s Miami Vice. I made a big passionate deal about the “fumes” in this film, and have taken a lot of shit for using that term ever since. But it’s one of the better-written reviews I’ve ever posted, I feel. I did a nice job of qualifying my praise, and it’s not easy to do that fairly when you’re talking about an 8 rather than a 9 or a 10. I own a Bluray of Miami Vice but I haven’t re-watched it in a long while. Seasons change, things fall away and you move on. But now I’m committed to going there again and experiencing what happens. Here’s the 7.11.06 review in full:

Michael Mann‘s movies are so good and so Rolls Royce that when a new one comes up 8, it’s an easy 9.5 or 10 by everyone else’s standards. If you know his stuff, you know what I’m saying is true. I’m not using the Rolls Royce analogy casually. The elation I felt yesterday from Miami Vice (Universal, 7.28) wasn’t just about tromp-down speed or engineering or a perfectly-tuned engine — that’s standard content in any Mann film. And it wasn’t quite about the sadness and the soul, which is in this film but not in the abundant qualities found in Heat and Collateral and The Insider.

Congrats to the obviously gifted Tony Award-winning Jessie Mueller for her triumphant performance as ’70s songwriter and singer Carole King in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.” (Which I should have seen when I was in Manhattan five weeks ago.) I think her singing and particularly her phrasing of King’s “You’ve Got A Friend” is more arresting than King’s version, if you want to know. But a sinking feeling poured into me when I read that Mueller said the following during her acceptance speech at the Tonys: “I have to thank God because without him, nothing is possible, and that is true — that will always be true. I’d never want to tell anyone what to believe or not believe. But there’s no doubt in my mind that God put me in the right place at the right time.” Terrific. Because when God joins forces with special-glow humans on this or that endeavor, only wonderful things result. Because God is selective in his alliances. He never buddies up with people of questionable character or motives.

By God’s grace or some other influence, non-Scope films produced by United Artists in the ’50s and ’60s have been mastered for home video (laser disc, DVD, Bluray, streaming) at 1.66 for the most part. This tradition has led Kino Lorber to issue their forthcoming Bluray of Stanley Kramer‘s On The Beach (’59) in that blessed aspect ratio and not, thank fortune, in the dreaded 1.85. I’m presuming there is ample documentation to prove that On The Beach was projected in many U.S. theatres at 1.85, and I’m fairly certain that aspect ratio historian Bob Furmanek would be happy to provide this documentation and in so doing push for a 1.85 masking if Kino Lorber asked him for advice, but thank God they haven’t.

You too can look like a clueless, fashion-following metrosexual dipshit with the “short suit,” which Business Insider‘s Hayley Peterson says “is finally going mainstream.” J. Crew, Topman, Asos and Barneys are among the retailers selling the short suit. “They may be taking cues from fashion icon Pharrell Williams, who donned tuxedo shorts to the Academy Awards earlier this year,” Peterson writes. The short suit “is definitely having a moment, particularly with younger guys,” Jon Patrick, the creative director at menswear company J.Hilburn, tells Peterson. Especially among brain surgeons who live in Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Fargo.

Yesterday’s “What Does Edge Under-Performance Say About Cruise’s Drawing Power?” piece got a lot of replies, but the best was written by HE regular Anna Zed. This might be the nub of it, I’m thinking. Maybe not the whole enchilada but a very significant portion:

“In the AMC in Arcadia where I saw Edge of Tomorrow there was a technical snafu of some kind after the warm-up trailers and ads,” she writes. “We had a blank screen for a full five minutes right at what was supposed to be showtime. I finally went off down the hall in search of an usher (no one else did). Typically, the theater had no idea that the full house was sitting there with no feature playing. The projection booth literally had nobody in it.

“I’m telling you this story because when I found somebody to complain to (all the way out front) I could not remember the title of the film.

“I told him there was a lights-out problem with ‘the Tom Cruise thing.’
“The guy said ‘huh?’
“I said again ‘the Tom Cruise movie.’
“‘Huh?’ again.
“Theater One.”
“Oh, okay, we’ll get someone there right away to fix the problem!”

“So what does that tell ya? I couldn’t remember the name of the damn thing and I spend all of my leisure hours reading movie blogs and had just bought a ticket to it, and the guy working in the theater didn’t even recognize what I was talking about.

“I think they should have gone with Live.Die.Repeat, as someone suggested somewhere on here.

The common assessment was that Doug Liman and Tom Cruise‘s Edge of Tomorrow is an inventive, highly diverting Groundhog Day-meets-D-Day-meets-Starship Troopers, and that it would do bang-up business. Clearly a huge hit waiting to happen, or at least a pretty big one. But it did only moderately well. It didn’t quite top $30 million and therefore came in third behind The Fault In Our Stars ($48 million) and Malificient ($33 million). (The upside is that Edge did $82 million overseas.) Boxoffice Mojo reported that Edge‘s Friday tally of $10.7 million “was lower than Cruise’s last movie Oblivion ($13.3 million) and last August’s Elysium ($11.1 million).” It doesn’t figure. Will it have stronger legs than Stars and manage a bounce-back next weekend? Did a portion of the potential audience believe that Edge might be too similar to Oblivion (futuristic battle scenarios) and figured it was just more of the same? Or has something happened to the Cruise brand? I only know this was unexpected and in fact feels like a bit of a shocker.

Yesterday afternoon I was standing in line at a Best Buy checkout line, and I suddenly felt the too-close presence of the guy behind me. I turned slightly to check him out. He was Latino and heavy-set with a foggy-eyed expression, like a slightly overweight Michael Pena on too much Percodan. And wearing low-rider threads — crummy-looking T-shirt, baggy pants, 99-cent store lace-ups. What struck me was that he wasn’t standing steadily but seemed a tiny bit woozy and unsure of his balance. Was he bombed? Possibly, but that seemed like a bizarre thing in the mid-afternoon inside a big, bright, antiseptic environment like Best Buy. All I knew was that he was violating my 18 inches of space. He would be 24 or 30 inches away and then lean forward and shift his balance and suddenly his head would be less than 12 inches away. Once or twice I felt his breath on the back of my neck or arms. Fuck’s your problem? I turned around and glanced again. This guy’s obviously a psycho, I told myself. Don’t say anything, don’t eyeball him….just chill down and pay for your stuff and let it go. But what kind of asshole can’t stand up straight and observe the 18-inch rule, which is recognized the world over?

It was reported two or three days ago that Denzel Washington is in talks with MGM to star in an Antoine Fuqua-directed remake of John Sturges‘ The Magnificent Seven (’60), itself a remake of Akira Kurosawa‘s Seven Samurai (’54). Denzel would presumably play Yul Brynner‘s gunslinger character, a.k.a. “Chris.” Great idea but then it got better when Terry McCarty tweeted yesterday that he’d love to see Tom Cruise portray Steve McQueen‘s role, Vin. Excellent idea! Can you imagine Cruise and Washington trying to outbox and out-maneuever each other? Not to mention the old-fashioned allure of a couple of stars twirling six guns and leaping over adobe walls, etc.

It’ll never happen, of course.

Cruise would never play second-banana to Washington — to do so would be seen as a tacit admission that his big-star days are over. On top of which Cruise’s pride has presumably been hurt by Edge of Tomorrow coming in third this weekend (it made less than $30 million compared to $48 million earned by The Fault In Our Stars). His back is against the wall and now he’s got something to prove, which is that he’s still got the big-star box-office clout that he’s enjoyed for 30-odd years. In this scenario Cruise lacks the confidence to do something outside the box like play McQueen’s role, etc. But it would be great if it came together.

I enjoyed reading Scott Feinberg‘s 6.6 Hollywood Reporter interview with Jerry Lewis, which was basically about publicizing Paramount Home Video’s Nutty Professor Bluray box set, which streeted on June 3rd. Feinberg is always well-prepared and in the zone when he interviews old-time Hollywood legends, and he holds his own with the sometimes cantankerous Lewis. Lewis will eat you alive if you haven’t done your homework. You need have your shit wired tight and then some. I know, having interviewed the guy back in ’95.

The best take-away is Lewis mentioning that he changes his socks four times day because it makes him feel renewed. Obviously an extravagant habit. To do that you’d have to own…what, at least 30 pairs of socks that you like? (Most of us have a few pairs of cool socks and several more pairs of what-the-hell, nothing-to-shout-about socks.) If you only owned 30 pairs you’d have to wash and dry them two or three times per week. If you owned 50 pairs you wouldn’t be such a slave to the wash cycle. I immediately decided to try a variation. Henceforth I’m a two-pairs-per-day man. Managable. Change in the late afternoon or early evening. Thanks to Lewis and Feinberg for the idea…seriously.

…but you speak the truth.

From the American Film Institute’s 42nd Life Achievement Award ceremony for Jane Fonda: “Meryl Streep recalled a day on the set of Julia that someone came up to her, saying how she was glad that Jane was feeling better because she has been ‘crying all night.’ ‘Why?’ Streep asked. She was told, ‘Well, they looked at dailies from last week and [Jane] just thinks she looks so old.’

“’She was 38 years old and so beautiful,’ Streep recalled. ‘We’re all afflicted with these insecurities, but Jane has a special radar…what she does, she deflects her own anxiety and made me — a day player, a nobody — feel fantastic. After we wrapped that movie, I found out she’d gone back to California and told everyone who would listen about this girl with a weird last name, and [that] opened more doors than I even probably know about today.”

To me, curved-screen ultra-HD televisions are as essential as high-def 3D, which is to say not at all. The only way it might make a real difference is if you’re sitting 24 to 30 inches away from a 70-inch screen and dead center at that. The only reason Samsung and others are making curved screens is because they’re trying to generate new revenue streams from those TV buyers who fancy themselves as high-end connoisseurs. It’s basically a big con.