This morning I saw the alleged “Final Cut” of Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (’73). But the word “final” is deceptive because it’s not the fabled 99- or 100-minute version but a 94-minute “middle” version. For marketing purposes Rialto Pictures is calling it the end-all and be-all, but in the mind of any honest archivist it’s not. It’s certainly preferable to the butchered 87-minute cut that was released in 1973 but it’s an an “almost but no cigar” restoration. Hardy has said that the 94-minute cut has his “blessing” and that’s fine, but it doesn’t appear to be the version he initially cut together. To repeat, the 94-minute “middle version” lies in the foggy netherworld between the 87-minute theatrical cut and the 99- or 100-minute long version. Archivist Steve Phillips has catalogued much of the material contained in the version I saw this morning (which the printed press materials say is 94 minutes long but you never know). Here’s Phillips’ Wicker Man home page. The middle version reminded me what a superb actor Edward Woodward was and always will be in the minds of his fans. He never failed to deliver right on the mark. The man had balls, class, conviction, diction, passion.

Manhattan life is plagued by many irritations. I hate the fact that subway car doors frequently don’t open for several seconds after the train stops at a station. (In Paris you can manually open the doors yourself with that silver latch handle thing.) But the biggest drag these days (for me anyway) are the slowpokes on the street and especially in the subways. I’m not saying they have to race around like crazy rats, but what’s wrong with walking with a purposeful stride? Very few charge around like yours truly, it seems, and the ones that are really slow and obstructionist and are always blocking the sidewalks in groups of five or six or more…I was going to say it’s the tourists but I’m starting to think it’s almost everyone these days except for X-factor types. For me walking around Manhattan is exhilarating exercise, especially if you walk with a little bounce in your step; for the vast majority it’s apparently something to be endured by reducing energy expenditure as much as possible and shuffling around like 80somethings.

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I saw an IMAX 3D version of Victor Fleming‘s The Wizard of Oz at 10 am this morning at Leows’ Kips Bay. The screen was fairly small so I wouldn’t call it a genuine IMAX presentation, but the 3D was real enough. I have to be honest and say that while it felt interesting to watch this 1939 classic in 3D, the experience didn’t floor me. The conversion was very nicely done, I felt — tasteful, subtle, unintrusive. So subtle, in fact, that after a while I kind of forgot that I was watching 3D. The same thing happened when I watched the 3D-converted Titanic. The 3D process just starts to take a back seat to the content of the film. You get used to it and then you start to forget about it.

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I think we all knew this, but now it’s reflected in a chart — fine. Update: It was announced two or three hours ago that Steve McQueen‘s period film has won the Toronto Film Festival Audience Award. If Joe and Jane Popcorn liked it in Toronto, it suggests that Academy bluehairs might be open to it also. Three days ago Grantland‘s Mark Harris told the LA/NY award-season cognoscenti to calm down (“It’s September, for God’s sake”), but what’s he thinking now, I wonder?

Here’s that 1990 Peter Ustinov interview for the Criterion Spartacus laser disc. Ustinov’s recollections of Charles Laughton (from 9:00 to 15:00) are priceless, particularly his mimicking of Laughton’s blinking and twitching. Ustinov’s description of Laughton — “An extremely vulnerable and sensitive soul who went through life just waiting to be offended” — strikes a chord. When I wake up and start my day I know that something appalling or offensive is just waiting around the corner, and that the only way to keep this encounter from happening is to stay indoors and just write. But if I do that I’ll eventually run out of material.

During the Toronto Film Festival I was told to steer clear of Matthew Weiner‘s You Are Here, a kind of mixed-bag relationship dramedy with Owen Wilson, Zach Galifianakis, Amy Poehler and Laura Ramsey. Part of me didn’t want to see this anyway because I can’t stand Galifianakis so I passed. As it turned out most of the reviews were negative. But a complaint voiced by Hitfix‘s Gregory Ellwood in a recent TIFF sum-up piece rubs me the wrong way.

“Weiner’s passion project about two buddies getting their lives back on track couldn’t decide what it wanted to be,” Ellwood writes. “A drama? A comedy? A farce?” My immediate reaction was “why does a movie have to decide what it precisely is in terms of tone and approach? Why can’t it be a blend? Why can’t a film accomodate differing attitudes and moods simultaneously or at least shift between them? Isn’t that what life is like sometimes?

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How many scripts would be out the window if there was suddenly a worldwide ban on all plots driven or influenced by alchoholism, drug addiction, economic desperation caused by drugs or booze, low-rent assholery and obesity (i.e., traits largely owned by the lower-middle-classes and underclass)? A third? More? I for one would be ecstatic if this rule were to be implemented. I realize that Hollywood perversely needs the primitive-appetites class because they lead to bad situations and thereby provide lots of raw material. But the less these tendencies are part of your own life (or the lives of your friends and family members) the more boring they seem. If I never see another movie about an alcoholic (unless it’s something exceptional like Leaving Las Vegas) or drug addict (unless it’s something exceptional like The Basketball Diaries) it’ll be too soon. What if the MPAA could rate films ALMCL (“about lower middle-class losers”) in addition to moralistic ratings concerning sex and violence?

Jason Statham programmers are almost always about lowbrow grunt-rage, but I was half into the idea of seeing this thing because of the presence of James Franco and Kate Bosworth (too slim and pretty to be living in Yeehawville?) in adverserial roles. But Gary Fleder directing and Sylvester Stallone producing and co-writing probably means exactly what you think it means.

It might be premature to predict that 12 Years A Slave will win the Best Picture Oscar and that its director, star and female costar — Steve McQueen, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong’o — could take the Best Director, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress trophies. But having seen Slave I can say without question that it’s not crazy or unreasonable to imagine this. At all. And if you throw in those other spitball noms for The Butler‘s Forrest Whitaker (Best Actor) and Oprah Winfrey (Best Supporting Actress) and Fruitvale Station‘s Ryan Coogler (Best Director) and Michael Jordan (Best Actor) you’re talking about the strongest Afro-centric presence at the Oscars in Hollywood history.

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It’s obvious what Grudge Match (Warner Bros., 12.25) will be — leave it there. But what about the Sylvester Stallone-as-Edgar Allen Poe film that was never made and which we’ll probably never see? That would be a new kind of hip comedy. I can do a pretty good imitation of Stallone muttering “once upon a midnight duhweerhy…”

The 70% Rotten Tomatoes consensus is that Christian Vincent‘s Haute Cuisine (Weinstein Co., 9.30), which will have an invitational screening in Manhattan on Monday night, is a pleasant enough, true-life diversion for foodies. Synopsis: “Renowned Perigord chef Hortense Laborie (Catherine Frot) is appointed personal chef for French president Francois Mitterand (Jean d’Ormesson)…despite jealous resentment from the other kitchen staff, the authenticity of her cooking seduces the President, but the corridors of power are littered with traps.” The Real McCoy’s name was/is Daniele Delpeuch — for some legal reason they changed her name for the film. The trailer’s use of “These Boots Are Made For Walkin'” scares me to death.