Toy Story 3 fans will recall the climactic scene when the toys are about to fall into the incinerator. Some guy named Justin Wallin turned to Final Cut Pro, made this scene the last shot in the film and showed it to his worldly mom, who was shocked and appalled. (What are the odds she’s an undecided voter?) I would have been worshipping Toy Story 3 on my knees if John Lasseter, Lee Unkrich and Michael Arndt had gone with this ending.

People who are putting down Joe Wright‘s Anna Karenina for being stylistically outside the box and therefore not approval-worthy are pedestrian-minded philistines. They’re saying “whoa, this is different and audacious and so it sucks!” There’s no lamer response to artistic experimentation than this. These people need more than scolding, I’m afraid. They need to be taken outside, bent over the woodpile and — no offense — spanked.

At least MCN’s David Poland gets it: “I am not, generally, a Joe Wright fan,” he wrote yesterday. “I think he’s gotten some nice performances from actors in the past, but has lost me on efforts at big style. Here, it’s big style from start to finish and I bought into it. Not everyone will. But I think there are enough people who will be pleased that it could well find a Best Picture slot at year’s end.” Thank you!

Los Angeles is a great town to write this column from except for the time zone. Pacific people are the last to wake up to anything. LA at 6:30 am means the night before in Sydney, 9:30 am in New York, 2:30 pm in London and 3:30 pm in Paris/Berlin/Rome/Prague. You’re always the last to read and respond unless you bang stuff out between 11 pm and 1 am, which is somewhat easier, I’m happy to say, since I stopped drinking.

I wrote the following on 1.25.11 after catching Jacob Aron Estes‘ The Details at Sundance: “[The film] is about things going badly for a Seattle-residing doctor and family man (Tobey Maguire), in part due to his own poor decisions but also because of horrible pre-ordained luck — fate or God or some overpowering force simply being against him.

“A similar theme drove the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man — God doesn’t care, and He might even be messing with you because He’s a perverse mofo possessed of a sick sense of humor.

“Cosmic disfavor or annoyance is clearly indicated in the very first scene. Maguire is shown sitting alone in front of an office building when all of a sudden a large piano falls from above, flattening him. We all know what it means when anything falls from the sky in a movie (like the frogs in Paul Thomas Anderson‘s Magnolia) — i.e., someone up there is in a bad or perverse mood or is in some way displeased.

“So during this morning’s q & a I asked Estes if he could express what his film is saying theologically, in 25 words or less. He said that God isn’t really in his film and that we all create our fate or destiny with our choices and our character. That struck me as blatantly dishonest given his use of the falling piano, but maybe I’m being too strict about this.”

Boilerplate synopsis: After ten years of marriage, Jeff and Nealy Lang (Maguire, Elizabeth Banks) have an idyllic suburban home…and a relationship on the skids. But, when a family of hungry raccoons ransacks their perfectly manicured backyard, Jeff becomes single-mindedly obsessed with eradicating the pests by any means necessary.

“Soon the relentless rodents aren’t merely uprooting the lawn, but also overturning the Langs’ entire bourgeois existence, as the man-versus-beast battle leads into an absurd mess of infidelity, extortion, organ donation and other assorted mayhem. Devilish throughout, The Details also stars Laura Linney, Ray Liotta, Dennis Haysbert and Kerry Washington.

The Details will be available on VOD on 10.5.12 and in theaters on 11.2.12.

Directed and Writtten by: Jacob Aaron Estes

Starring: Tobey Maquire, Elizabeth Banks, Laura Linney, Ray Liotta, Dennis Haysbert and Kerry Washington

This goal of this post is to marginally discredit the aspect-ratio theology of Bob Furmanek, who is (a) one of the leading advocates for the 1.85-ing of films shot and/or released starting in April or May of 1953 and (b) is perhaps chiefly responsible for persuading the powers-that-be to present the forthcoming Blurays of Warner Bros. Dial M for Murder and Sony’s On The Waterfront with a 1.85 aspect ratio.

The 185-ing of Dial M and Waterfront is an interesting variation if you want to be comme ci comme ca about it, but a major aesthetic tragedy in the view of light, air and space advocates like myself.

Notice the 1.37 compositions in the above mini-summary of Them! (Warner Bros., 6.19.54). They are clearly meant for projection at 1.37, or at the very least 1.66 if you’re insisting on a widescreen simulation. But definitely not 1.85. The Warner Bros. film was shot in the fall of 1953, or a good four or five months after most of the big studios had decided to abandon 1.37 aspect ratios in favor of 1.85. But Warner Bros., which opened Dial M for Murder on 5.29.54 in first-run ttheatres in 1.85., didn’t open Them! with 1.85 but in 1.37. Just as anyone with a mind to could have.

Here’s an excerpt from Them!‘s Wiki page:

“When Them! began production in the fall of 1953, it was originally conceived to be in 3-D and WarnerColor. During pre-production, tests were to be shot in color and 3-D. A few color tests were shot of the large-scale ant models, but when it was time to shoot the 3-D test, WB’s ‘All Media’ 3-D camera rig malfunctioned and no footage could be filmed.

“The next day, a memo was sent out that the color and 3-D aspects of the film were to be scrapped, and that black and white and wide-screen would be the preferred format, trying to emulate the ‘effective shock treatment’ of Warners’ The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms.

“Ultimately the film was not shot in widescreen. Because of the preparation of certain shots, however, many of the camera set-ups for 3-D still remain, such as the opening titles and flame-throwers that are shot at the camera.

“Although WB was dissatisfied with the color results, the opening titles were printed in color against a black and white background to give the opening of the film a ‘punch’. This effect was achieved by an EastmanColor section spliced into each print.”

L.A. Times reporter Ben Fritz reported earlier today that with Ron Burkle and Avenue Capital out of the running, Jay Penske, the owner of Deadline, is the “leading bidder” for Variety and is likely to buy the longstanding trade paper for about $30 million within the next three weeks.

Penske, 33, “plans to keep the Variety and Deadline brands distinct, according to a person familiar with his thinking,” Fritz wrote, “but it’s otherwise unclear how the outlets would be integrated.”

Let me explain something. Rationality, sensibleness and practicality usually prevail to some extent when a takeover happens, but they’re always mixed in with basic law-of-the-jungle rules and impulses. Never trust anyone who ignores the jungle element or says it doesn’t exist.

Variety is staffed with a lot of smart, crafty professionals — Steven Gaydos, Jeff Sneider, Justin Chang, Peter Debruges — but it’s an older, weaker lion in this equation, and Deadline is the younger, stronger, hungrier lion.

We all know what’s likely to happen. The first thing the younger lion does when he takes over is kill the older, weaker lion, and then he goes around and kills all the cubs, and then he goes to the lionesses and mates and produces cubs of his own. I’m not saying all the Variety cubs are goners, but it would be Pollyanic to presume that everything will stay intact and hunky-dory once Penske takes over. Forget it. One way or another there will be a lot of roaring and growling and bared fangs and more roaring and blood on the grass. It’s going to be traumatic. Just watch any documentary about lions.

The clarity of mind that comes to a man standing on the gallows is wonderful.

“Should the deal with Penske go through, it would mark a shift in power in the world of showbiz insider news,” Fritz wrote. “Founded in 2006 as a blog spinoff of editor in chief Nikki Finke’s industry column for L.A. Weekly, Deadline is a direct rival to Variety and its longtime rival the Hollywood Reporter and has become a dominant force in breaking and delivering online entertainment news.”

“If the deal goes through, it could be a little bit awkward for Variety and Deadline to work under the same roof,” wrote The Atlantic Wire‘s Adam Clark Estes. “The six-year-old Deadline is likely somewhat responsible with the 107-year-old Variety’s downfall. Not only did Deadline offer up industry scoops for free after Variety went behind a paywall, but [Deadline‘s Nikki] Finke also made a habit of hiring away Variety‘s reporters to work for her site.”

In speaking to MTV.com’s Josh Horowitz about the two upcoming Hitchcock films, The Girl and Hitchcock, Brian DePalma — once described in the late ’70s as a guy who “every other year picks the bones of a dead director and gives his wife a job” — says it seems unfair to tarnish Hitch’s reputation. He’s referring to The Girl, of course — the HBO pic about Hitch’s icky obsession for Tippi Hedren — and not Hitchcock.

I’m moderately impressed by the new poster for Tom Hooper‘s Les Miserables (Universal, 12.25), and more specifically by the casting of Isabelle Allen as young Cosette, who grows up to be Amanda Seyfried. In the choosing of younger versions of established actors, filmmakers are often blase or careless as the kids they pick don’t even faintly resemble the grown-ups. For whatever strange reason Allen actually looks like Seyfried. A lot.

A cheesy-looking doc called Momo: The Sam Giancana Story will have a screening at the world-renowned Bel-Air Film Festival on 10.14.12 at UCLA’s James Bridges Theater at 2 pm. I’m running this because I was struck by the cavalier and creepily amoral vibe coming off the trailer. The assertions and suggestions about the Chicago-based mobster‘s life seem at least partly accurate, but the doc seems to have been made by stone-cold sociopaths, This is suggested in a moment that half-brags about Giancana having possibly ordered JFK’s assassination.

The copy read by the trailer’s narrator reads in part: “[Giancana is] the sharp-dressing guy who takes way too little credit for far too much. Cross him once, wake up dead. Just ask Kennedy.” Quick cut to the Zapruder exploding-head shot and then to John-John Kennedy saluting his father. If this isn’t one of the most disgusting uses of montage in world history, it’ll do until one gets here.

Remember the New Jersey mafia family in Woody Allen‘s Broadway Danny Rose? A voice is telling me that those guys are cousins, in a loose manner of speaking, of the people who made this film.

Various Giancana family members have tired to cash in on their dad’s reputation with books (“Double Cross,” “JFK and Sam“). Momo, which has been kicking around on the second-rate film festival circuit for at least eight months, was directed and co-written by Dimitri Logothetis, and produced and co-written by Gianacana’s grand-nephew Nicholas Celozzi. The film includes the participation of two of Sam’s daughters, Francince and Bonnie. Celozzi told a ReelChicago interviewer in 2010 that he got Bonnie to participate by saying, “I promise we’ll make the film the right way, by telling your relationship and establish the man behind the myth.”

A Chicago publicist named Danielle Garnier invited me through LinkedIn to the 10.14 screening. I wrote her back with this reply: “I would be delighted to meet you and see Momo and do whatever I can to help the family of Sam Giancana profit as fully as possible from the stories of Giancana’s murderous exploits.” She didn’t get it and wrote back saying thanks and she’s looking forward to meet me.

Her pitch letter states that “the filmmakers have some options for distribution but are open to anyone looking to tell the story as blueprinted in this documentary…they already wrote (sic) a 6 episode mini-series and would like to develop a feature film — family rights from one of America’s most powerful man who worked both for the government and lead the biggest organized crime in American history.”

She also mis-spelled “assassination.”

In a trailer clip Bonnie Giancana says her father “was funny, he was comical, he was witty. He really wasn’t a bad guy.” Of course! Who would have the temerity to suggest otherwise?

Francine Giancana says in another clip, “He was just my idol.”

Sure thing.

A highly intelligent and very well written assessment of the differences between 70mm and digital 4K presentations of Paul Thomas Anderson‘s The Master was provided this morning by Twitchfilm’s Jason Gorber. He basically says 4K is just as good as 70mm, and in some ways better. I agree. I saw The Master in 4K last weekend and I could hear the dialogue more clearly than during my initial 70mm exposure in Toronto.

Gorber also notices something that I pointed out on 9.19 when I wrote that that “delicate bits of dirt have been added to the 4K version of The Master — to the digital intermediate, I mean — in order to give the digital versions the look of film.” As Gorber puts it, “you can still see dirt on the 4K ‘print’…occasionally black specks creep into the image, little bits of grunge that keep the image from appearing pristine.

“This was very confusing,” Gorber writes, until he realized that the black specks and grungy gunks are there “because PTA wanted them there.

“It’s gunk he either added, or at least allowed to stay, built into the digital master as artifacts of the process. This is the cinema equivalent of leaving in easily removable tape hiss, or worse, adding in the sound of vinyl pops or cracks in order to come across as ‘retro.’ In certain scenes (the ‘blinking’ test is one), in both presentations, you can hear the wheeze of the camera chugging away.

“This is a filmmaker not afraid to show the seams of his process, and while reluctantly creating a digital ‘print,’ he nonetheless left in a number of these quirks of analogue filmmaking to make it appear a bit less … perfect.

“Going further, PTA could easily have added the cue marks as well to the 4K, added bob and weave into the digital source so that it to exhibited all the ‘flaws’ inherent in film projection. He went part way but not all the way there, still crafting a near pristine digital master that does a more than satisfactory job of presenting the film in its best possible light.”

One of the most inconsiderate things any driver can do is to attempt a standard parallel parking maneuver (i.e., stopping cold and then slowly reversing into a parking spot) on a busy two- or four-lane boulevard. This always forces dozens of others to stop dead and cool their jets while the driver very slowly and always without evident skill backs into the parking space. It always takes them forever. You just want to pull out a Glock and shoot their rear tires.

Don’t most people have power steering these days? The only way to park on a busy street is to ignore what the DMV says and just dart your nose in there and then wiggle around until you’ve got your car more or less parallel to the curb and within 18 inches of it. I would never, ever stop dead on a busy street and effectively say to the people behind me, “Excuse me but I’m going to parallel park now…would you mind stopping and waiting for the next 80 or 90 seconds, and perhaps for the next two minutes? You don’t have anything pressing to do, right?”

If I parallel park I’m out of the driving lane within 5 or 10 seconds and the whole maneuver is complete within 20 or 30 seconds, tops.

The key thing about driving in a major city like Los Angeles, above and beyond observing basic rules of safety, is to never fuck with the flow by getting in people’s way. Yes, sometimes you just have to suck it in and wait and do your breathing exercises. Like when the old Jews in the Fairfax district slowly shuffle across the street with their walkers. I always tell myself “there but for the grace of God” and “they’re doing the best they can.” But I give glares of hate to almost all parallel parkers.

I always take note of the gender and ethnicity of the driver when stuff like this happens, and each and every time I’ve been stuck behind a parallel parker the driver is always female. Why? Because guys are aware of the “never fuck with the flow” rule and would rather go into a concrete parking structure and pay $6 dollars rather than block people.

By the way: I was cruising down Third Street in West Hollywood last night, and out of the wild blue yonder a woman driver just pulled out of a parking lot directly in front of me. I was maybe 75 feet or 90 feet away at the time but going 40 or 45 mph, and if I hadn’t tromped on the brake immediately I would have slammed into her. Did she roll down the window and wave in order to say “sorry…wasn’t looking!” Of course not. She just kept on driving and chatting with some dude who was riding shotgun.

“Defensive driving” means knowing that this kind of thing is going to happen sooner or later and just waiting for it. This is the key to not getting into accidents in this town. You’re going to hit someone if you drive around thinking “here I come…get out of my way!” You have to drive around like Hercule Poirot and say to yourself, “Okay, where are the assholes? They’re out in force so I have to keep a close watch.”