In a “Premature 2015 Best Picture Oscar Predictions” piece, Indiewire‘s Oliver Lyttleton has listed Carey Fukunaga‘s Beasts of No Nation as a highly likely Best Picture contender if it had any chance of being released this year. Except this seems unlikely as the film, an adaptation of Uzodinma Iweala‘s violent Africa-set novel, will only begin filming later this month. Lyttleton is all woo-woo because Fukunaga directed all eight episodes of HBO’s True Detective and he’s figuring the director of the masterful Sin Nombre is on a roll.

Lyttleton acknowledges that Beasts contains “material that threatens to be difficult to watch, but prognosticators worrying about that sort of thing have been proven wrong more than once of late (nominations for Amour and 12 Years A Slave winning), and a supporting role for Idris Elba should help bring in some eyes, plus this year’s race (so far) is rather lacking in ‘important fare.'”

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With all the sudden whackings and the rolling of heads over the past three or four years at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (Mara Manus hired and fired, Kent Jones departs and returns, Scott Foundas ascends and leaves, Rose Kuo takes over only to get whacked like Joe Pesci in Goodfellas), the 65th Street organization has resembled a cross between the House of Borgia and House of Cards. So reactions to Lesli Klainberg‘s appointment as Executive Director and Eugene Hernandez as Deputy Director have been something along the lines of “okay, let’s see how long they last before the next palace coup or mafia-styled garroting.” Seriously, best wishes to them both and particularly Eugene. (Note: Klainberg’s decision to re-create her first name, which was almost certainly “Leslie” when she was a kid, means…I don’t know what it means but “Lesli” feels a bit affected on some level.)

Everybody knows Wes Anderson‘s The Grand Budapest Hotel (opening today, Fox Searchlight) is presented in three aspect ratios — 1.37, 1.85 and 2.39. This 3.6 Slate piece by David Haglund and Aisha Harris explains the whys and the particulars. The question is whether or not commercial “projectionists” (I use that term loosely as most theatres have senior ushers working the booths) will project it correctly or not. When Budapest goes to 1.37, mind, the image goes higher and deeper — it doesn’t just become a narrow windowbox image. The high-end projectionist on the Fox lot screwed this transition up (albeit briefly) when I first saw it with the trade reviewers, so what are the odds that average projectionists might do the same? I’m planning to visit two or three of the best LA theatres playing The Grand Budapest Hotel and see if they’re managing it properly. If anyone notices any a.r. problems anywhere, please inform.

1.85:1

2.39:1

1.37:1

Stanley Kubrick used to check projection standards in the ’60s and ’70s, as I recall. Particularly with A Clockwork Orange (1.66, not 1.85) and Barry Lyndon (which he also wanted shown at 1.66 and not 1.85). I can hear the grinding of teeth from the 1.85 fascists, particularly those who reside in the New York area, but they’re just going to have to accept the way things are now.

“If the question is, am I actively right now organizing and raising money and so forth for a campaign for president, I am not doing that. On the other hand, am I talking to people around the country? Yes, I am. Will I be doing some traveling around the country? Yes, I will be. But I think it’s premature to be talking about (the specifics of) a campaign when we still have a 2014 congressional race in front of us.” — U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont) speaking to Truthout’s John Nichols in an interview published today (3.7).

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Two weeks ago I mentioned the necessity of being able to see a high-def version of Ken Russell‘s Women in Love (’69), which is only viewable now as a 2003 MGM Home Video DVD. Ditto Russell’s The Music Lovers (’70), his tortured-Tchaikovsky biopic with Richard Chamberlain as the closeted Russain composer. Viewable only as a DVD — no Bluray and not even a Vudu high-def version. The Music Lovers was the third of Russell’s five biographical films about classical composers. Elgar (’62) and Delius: Song of Summer (’68) came before it, and then Mahler (’74) and Lisztomania (’75).

Chiemi Karasawa‘s Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me (Sundance Selects, 3.7) is one of the frankest and boldest docs I’ve ever seen (or would want to see) about what a bitch 87 years old can be. Karasawa’s film is admirably blunt and candid, but that Bette Davis line about aging being “not for sissies” has never seemed more dead-on. This is no glossy showbiz portrait. Well, it is but it has more on its mind than just praise, and some of what we’re shown is unpleasant. I’m just being as honest as Karasawa’s film, okay? It’s not a walk in the park, this thing. But it’s quite tough and ballsy. And hats off to the subject for allowing the raw truth to come through.

Elaine Stritch, God love and praise her, is a Broadway legend and survivor extraordinaire. Most of the under-45s know her as Alec Baldwin‘s mom on 30 Rock, but you have to watch this YouTube video of Stritch’s one-woman show, Elaine Stritch: At Liberty, which she did in her late 70s and which won her a Tony.

How much of that 77 or 78 year-old can be found in the 87 year-old version? Honestly? Somewhere between half and two-thirds. Stritch is still that great, snappy firecracker and pistolero with the brassy attitude and the world-class gams. But Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me is really about what being 87 (Stritch is now 89) was doing to her and how she was pushing back all the same, pushing and performing and rehearsing and travelling around and forgetting lyrics and walking the uptown Manhattan streets. But still losing the battle.

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A lady and I were in a live-in relationship during the summer of ’85. We shared a nice single-level bungalow in Beachwood Canyon that had a cedar-wood sundeck with a great view. Things were kind of mezzo-mezzo between us. Not terrific but not too bad. So-so. One Sunday afternoon we went to the beach in Santa Monica, and we laid our blanket down fairly close to the surf but not too close. We were both reading for the most part, and then she began to take a nap. Before too long the tide began to wash in and the surf got closer and closer. Every so often a big wave would splash down and the water and the foam would come within three or four feet. And then two or three feet. I knew we’d be soaked sooner or later. But I didn’t wake her up. On some mildly devilish level I had decided it might be amusing if she were to be woken up by the water splashing onto the blanket. This was obviously a sign that I wasn’t feeling a lot of love. In order to not be blamed I got up and took a short walk, all the while keeping an eye on the blanket and my girlfriend. Five or ten minutes later a wave finally got her. I was standing maybe 50 feet away. She flinched and yelped and was furious. “What the fuck is wrong with you?,” she yelled. “Whaddaya mad at me for?,” I said. “I was just taking a walk.” But on some level she knew. I never copped to it but she knew or at least suspected. I’ve never admitted this until now. I’m sorry. Well, kind of.

Director Anton Corbijn (Control, The American, A Most Wanted Man) is currently shooting Life, a mid 1950s drama about a friendship between real-life Life photographer Dennis Stock (Robert Pattinson) and legendary actor James Dean (Dane DeHaan). Principal photography begin on 2.18.14 in Toronto and will continue until 3.27.14. The film obviously could open later this year but it’ll probably go for a 2015 release. What do I know?

Stock was around 27 when he photographed Dean (most famously capturing that Times Square shot of an overcoat-wearing Dean hunched over in the rain). Stock died at age 81 in January 2010. Dean died on 9.30.55 in a car crash about 35 or 40 miles east of Paso Robles.

Dean and Stock in early 1955, presumably in some New York bar.

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Yesterday I spoke with Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson about her new book, “The $11 Billion Year,” a story of the ups and downs and turnarounds of 2012. Thompson’s idea was to make a movie-release version of William Goldman‘s The Season (’04), a chronicle of Broadway’s trials and tribulations in 1967 and ’68. When I think of 2012 I think of the year in which Argo beat Zero Dark Thirty and Silver Linings Playbook in the Best Picture race, but there was more to it than that, of course. Digital encroachment. Oscar takedown campaigns. Shifting concepts of where the money is coming from, and how much and at what stage of the game. Zombie studio executives churning out dumber and dumber summer tentpoles. Greater and greater numbers of belligerent apes talking to the screen in megaplexes.

“The $11 Billion Year” author sighing books yesterday at Manhattan’s NYU Bookstore.

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I wrote about John Ridley‘s All Is By My Side, the story of Jimi Hendrix‘s career transition from 1966 to ’67 (i.e., New York-based cafe performer to London-based psychedelic phenomenon) after catching 40% of it during last September’s Toronto Film Festival. It’ll re-appear on Wednesday, March 12th at South by Southwest with a new title: JIMI: All Is By My Side. There’s also a scene featuring star Andre Benjamin that was posted online today.

Here are my initial remarks, posted on 9.14.13:

“Two or three minutes after settling into All Is By My Side I was feeling stirred by Benjamin’s dead-on performance. It was obvious he’d captured Hendrix’s manner, vibe, voice…that gentleness, that ambivalent but spiritually directed mood-trip thing. Plus I was feeling a certain comfort with Ridley’s script and direction. I wasn’t knocked flat but I was saying to myself, ‘This kind of works…yeah.’

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It would be great if this new Sin City movie would actually look and talk and behave like a real film noir from the early ’50s. If it would imitate the attitude and stylings of Fritz Lang‘s The Big Heat, let’s say. That’s impossible, of course, because this latest collaboration between shameless-genre-wallower Robert Rodriguez and reactionary anti-Occupy Wall Street screenwriter Frank Miller has to pander to exaggerated comic-book notions of what film noir might have been if the original purveyors were low-rent genre wallowers instead of actual filmmakers. Josh Brolin, Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Jaime King, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dennis Haysbert, Jamie Chung, Bruce Willis, Eva Green, Julia Garner, Ray Liotta, Juno Temple, Jeremy Piven and Stacey Keach costar. Movies like this test my love for black-and-white images.