In their latest (8.1) newsletter, the board of the Elitist Fraternity of Film Dweebs reminded readers that (and I quote) “under no circumstance will any EFFD members be permitted to say anything that doesn’t enthusiastically praise Criterion’s Bluray of John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds.” I understand the ruling, but I bought this Bluray at Amoeba last night and then drove home and watched it. And watched it. And watched it. And I’m telling you it’s a black drag to sit through. A dark, creepy, chilly-hearted downer from start to finish. Mainly about malevolence and threats and intimidation and dread. “Interesting,” yes, because of the creepy Orwellian (or do I mean Burroughsian?) tone and James Wong Howe‘s nightmarish black-and-white cinematography. But it’s mostly punishing.

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I have a system in discussing possible Telluride Film Festival selections with the publicists who represent then. A publicist can’t spill the beans so you have to be tricky about it. Here’s how I put it to a publicist friend the other day: “I know you can’t say anything but I think your film is going to Telluride. Do me a favor — if it’s not going to Telluride, please write me and ask if I have any extra tickets to the next Dodger game. Okay? I’ll repeat — if it’s NOT going to Telluride, please write me and ask if I have any extra tickets to the next Dodger game. Which means that if your film is going to Telluride, you won’t email me about Dodger tickets. Okay? Fair?”

I was thinking about that scene in All The President’s Men when Dustin Hoffman‘s Carl Bernstein tells a source to hang up the phone by the count of ten if a story about H.R. Haldeman is wrong. Hoffman counts to ten and the source doesn’t hang up. Before signing off the source says, “Okay…are we straight, man?” And then it turns out he was some kind of moron and didn’t understand what Bernstein was saying.

It’s a very rare thing in movies when a significant character realizes that he/she is very unhappy in a job or in a marriage and wants very much to leave, and yet it doesn’t happen because he/she can’t afford it. I can think of two films in which this has happened. One, The Purple Rose of Cairo when Mia Farrow realizes she has no choice but to go back to brutish husband Danny Aiello because she has no place else to go. And two, From Here To Eternity when Deborah Kerr decides to return to the U.S. with her disgraced husband because she knows her relationship with Burt Lancaster is over and she has no other way to survive.

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When it comes to present-day moral quandaries about 70% of me is the brilliant but cynical Marxist sister who’s led a very unhappy life, 20% of me is Rabbi Saul and 10% of me is Martin Landau going “whoa…did I just say that?” I love the way Saul reacts to Landau’s question without the slightest hiccup and then answers without skipping a beat. Haunted 60ish stranger from the future lurking in our home with a moral question? Go ahead, shoot.

I somehow managed to do something to my lower back a week or so ago. I was lifting potted plants in and out of my car and I guess I put too much strain on my back and not enough on my upper legs. If I’ve been sitting in a bent-over position it really hurts when I stand up. If I walk around I’m okay after ten minutes but initially I’m groaning and bent over like a 78 year-old. It’s bad. Yesterday afternoon I went to a chiropractor, and he said right away that my right hip was out of alignment or wasn’t level with the left hip or whatever. He pushed and pulled and leaned in and made everything feel great (“I’m feeling better!”, I told a friend), and then 30 minutes after leaving his office most of the pain returned. I’m going back Saturday for another session.

I’ve had back issues all my life. Calamity #1 happened in ninth grade when I jumped off the top row of some wooden bleachers and injured my back to some extent. Then I hurt it even worse when I was uprooting some trees for a New Canaan contractor (“Big John” Calitri) and again I used my back too much. Calamity #3 happened in late December 1999 when I was flying down a snow-covered slope on a toboggan and then at the bottom of the slop[e went shooting up a small hill made of snow and ice and fell off the toboggan and came crashing down on my lower back or hip. Once you’ve had back trouble you never really get over it.

A week or two ago I mentioned the possible revival of Hot Shot Movies as a Monday fall film series (early October to mid-December) that would screen the usual unreleased Oscar contenders or above-average movies plus a q & a with a filmmaker. The kicker as far as publicists are concerned is that the next day I would post photos plus an mp3 of the interview plus occasional video footage so everyone would partake in a sense.

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A few days ago I proclaimed my devotion for Vudu’s vast HD library, particularly their HDX (super highdef) quality images and numerous classic black-and-white titles. Last night I learned that John Frankenheimer‘s The Train is rentable or purchasable as an HDX file…magnificent! And Point Blank and Gunga Din! I’ve done some searching and can report that the following films (none currently on Bluray) are being offered as HDX files:

A Man and a Woman, A Man for All Seasons, A Place in The Sun, After Hours, Alfie, The Americanization of Emily, Atlantic City, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Captain Blood, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Catch-22, Death Wish, Destination Tokyo, East of Eden, From Here to Eternity, Giant, Gone With the Wind, The Gunfighter, Gunga Din, Warren Beatty‘s Heaven Can Wait, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, Hombre, Horror of Dracula, Klute, Lust for Life, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, McCabe & Mrs.Miller, Out of the Past, The Philadelphia Story, Play it Again, Sam, Point Blank, Rebel Without a Cause, Ride the High Country, To Have and Have Not, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Witness, The Year of Living Dangerously.

Yesterday TheWrap‘s Steve Pond reported that Sony Pictures is disputing Tom O’Neil‘s Gold Derby report (since corrected) that George Clooney‘s Monuments Men “will not be waging an Oscar campaign this season, saying that story jumped the gun and is incorrect.” Translation: After it gets shown around Monuments Men may settle in as (a) a smart, engaging, spottily humorous World War II ensemble drama (i.e., an art commando version of The Dirty Dozen or Kelly’s Heroes) or (b) the final version may convey something more than the sum of its parts and it may become an awards player…who knows?

On the set of Monuments Men in Bad Grund, Germany on 5.6.13: Producer & co-writer Grant Heslov, star-director-producer & cowriter George Clooney. (Photo snapped by yours truly.)

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A quote from Steadicam inventor and operator Garrett Brown contained in an 11-month-old Pajiba.com article by Cindy Brown suggests that Warner Bros. Home Video and former Stanley Kubrick assistant and confidante Leon Vitali erred when they decided to master the 2011 Bluray of The Shining at a 1.85 to 1 aspect ratio. I don’t know the source of the Garrett quote (obviously not Brown), but he is quoted saying that Kubrick, director of The Shining, “insisted [that] every image be framed in [a] 1.66:1 ratio.”

Boinnnngggg!

Brown had “many, many arguments” with Kubrick over the camera’s crosshairs being in the middle of frame,” the article states. Kubrick’s order was that “if it hit on an actor’s left nostril, that’s exactly where it had to be [because] framing had to be symmetrical. Kubrick insisted every image be framed in 1.66:1 ratio, something between widescreen and Cinemascope [so that] people fill the frame.”

If valid, the Brown quote would be analogous to Kubrick’s famous 12.8.75 letter to projectionists (provided by Jay Cocks, posted by Glenn Kenny) stating unequivocally that Barry Lyndon was shot at 1.66 and that it should be projected at this aspect ratio, “and in no event at less than 1.75 to 1.” This contradicted a 2011 claim by Vitali that the proper Barry Lyndon aspect ratio was 1.77, which is how the 2011 Bluray was issued.

Sometime in October ’95 I did a phone interview with Kyle Cooper of R/Greenberg & Associates about his legendary Se7en main-title sequence. It was for my L.A. Times Syndicate column, which I’d been doing since mid ’94. It just hit me that this was nearly two decades ago. Okay, 18 years but still a long time. Jett was only six at the time and Dylan wasn’t yet seven. I remember attending the Se7en all-media at the Westwood Village, and talking to Don Murphy before it began. The whole world was there that night. And the historic 1995 Sundance Film Festival was set to happen five months hence.

Last January’s Sundance reactions to Joshua Michael Stern‘s JOBS (Open Road, 8.16), which I saw last night at the L.A. Live premiere, indicated I might feel underwhelmed or even irked. But I wanted to savor some of that old-time Cupertino Steve Jobs hey-hey. I knew JOBS wouldn’t be The Social Network but I was into it anyway because Apple technology is threaded into every aspect of my life except for vocal conversations, eating, exercise, sleeping, cat-petting, laundry-cleaning, bike-riding, grocery-shopping, cafe-sitting and amour, and it makes me happy every day. So I went in saying “look, just don’t piss me off…that’s all I’m asking…just don’t piss me off.” And it didn’t.

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We all drive selfishly or obnoxiously from time to time. But there’s another kind of driver who’s in a whole ‘nother league. The mark of a truly loathsome driver is one who doesn’t even realize that he/she is blocking others or causing traffic jams or whatever. They’re so fixated on their own needs or frustrations that it never even occurs to them that they’re making things difficult for others. In a word, they’re sociopaths.

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