A thought just hit me about the soundtrack of Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity (Warner Bros., 10.4), a floating, zero-gravity disaster drama with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. It should ideally emphasize the same kind of minimal sound design that Stanley Kubrick used for 2001: A Space Odyssey. No crashes, no impact sounds…nothing. It almost certainly won’t as audiences have been trained since Star Wars to expect the opposite. But it would be great if an alternate all-but-silent version could be offered on the Bluray.

At the very least Steven Price‘s soundtrack would do well to show restraint.

“Don’t let go” is an okay copy line. It’s fitting. (I’m saying this having read the script.) It recalls an old Roy Hamilton tune from the ’50s, but without the slightest echo or linkage.

The Saul Bass online tribute movement continues unabated with Google getting into the act. They posted this yesterday to acknowledge Bass’s 93rd birthday.

In one corner, a 5.6 rant by Toronto Standard‘s Alan Jones about Zach Braff‘s Kickstarter campaign. In another, Braff talks to KCRW’s Kim Masters about the how and why of it. Honestly? What Braff says sound sane and reasonable. Definitely worth a listen.

Maybe after I finally see Ryan Coogler‘s film in Cannes (after being shut out of two screenings at Sundance 2013), I’ll understand why the title was changed by Weinstein Co. marketers from Fruitvale to Fruitvale Station. I’m guessing it’s because Fruitvale sounds rural, like something to do with agriculture and working on a fruit farm, and Fruitvale Station sounds more urban. Pic is based on the true story of Oscar Grant, a young guys who was killed by the bulls at the Fruitvale rapid transit station in the Oakland area on New Year’s Day in 2009.

My disappointed response to the lackluster look of The Great Escape at last month’s TCM Classic Film Festival has been echoed by the reviews of the MGM/Fox Bluray, which came out yesterday. It’s relatively rare when Bluray reviewers will actually say “this blows,” but High-Def Digest’s Michael S. Palmer and Bluray.com’s Michael Reuben have essentially said this in their reviews. DVD Beaver’s Gary W. Tooze was more obliging, but he tends to flatter almost everything he sees.

How many years have I been belly-aching about the absence of a From Here to Eternity Bluray, despite Sony’s Grover Crisp having remastered this 1953 Best Picture winner sometime in early to mid 2009? My first “where’s the Bluray?” piece ran in November 2009. I’ve run two or three follow-ups since. Anyway, the endless delaying is over. Sony Home Video is finally releasing it on a Region 2 British disc on 10.7.13. Perhaps a Region A U.S. version will follow a few months later.

I finally saw Crisp’s high-def version on Turner Classic Movies last February. It’s clearly a significant enhancement over the DVD version that everyone has been looking at for the last 11 years or so. “Prettier”, less contrasty, smoother skin tones, greater specificity (especially in terms of the fabrics, hair follicles and the glistening look of rain-soaked streets) and so on. I like my Blurays to “pop” above and beyond what i’m used to from DVD versions, and Crisp’s Eternity definitely does that.

I’ll never own a 3D TV and if someone gave me one I probably wouldn’t pop for the forthcoming Wizard of Oz 3D Bluray. But I’d be lying if I said I’m not curious how it’ll look. Partly because I was so taken with the opening black-and-white 3D section of Oz, The Great And Powerful. Keep in mind, also, that a serious quality-level 3D conversion is difficult and expensive.

Maybe they’ll open this on a limited theatrical basis before the disc comes out, which will happen in either September or October.

16 year-old Asa Butterfield was 13 or 14 when he began shooting Martin Scorsese‘s Hugo, when he had a wide-eyed innocent look. Now as the titular, pint-sized hero in Ender’s Game, he looks like a young Elvis Costello. (Offscreen he wears Costello-styled glasses.) Dystopian sci-fi CG pic costars Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Viola Davis, Hailee Steinfeld and Abigail Breslin. Obviously cookie-cutterish. A cousin of Oblivion and Elysium with a “precocious Luke Skywalker-ish kid becoming a warrior” storyline.

A few hours ago the first trailer for Lee Daniels‘ The Butler (Weinstein Co., 10.18) appeared online. The famous-faces biopic is sketchily based on the life of White House butler Eugene Allen, who served in the White House beginning in 1952 and worked until 1986. (Allen died in 2008 at age 90.) The trailer’s tone indicates that the film will exude the tidy, homogenized sensibilities of The Help, some depictions of cotton-field racism a la Roots and perhaps the schmaltzy emotionality that some of us associate with The Color Purple.

Robin Williams as Presidetn Dwight D. Eisenhower.

John Cusack as President Richard M,. Nixon.

Alan Rickman as President Ronald Reagan.

Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan.

Liev Schrieber as President Lyndon B. Johnson.