We all like to pass along gossip and maybe embellish for effect, but Orson Welles took the cake 30 years ago when he dished about the plane-crash death of Carole Lombard to Henry Jaglom. It happened during a luncheon they shared in 1983, which Jaglom recorded and transcribed and has now shared in a book called “My Lunches With Orson” (Metropolitan, 7.16). Welles contended that the plane Lombard was flying on the night of 1.16.42 was “full of big-time American physicists” (news reports said it was full of small-time Army guys) and that the plane was shot down by “Nazi agents” and that the plane was “filled with bullet holes.”

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Even though I’ve seen Martin Ritt‘s The Spy Who Came In From The Cold ten or twelve times, I’m still going to possess the new Bluray version when it streets in September. Because it’ll be better looking, of course, than that handsome but not 100% satisfying Criterion DVD that came out in ’08. And because it’ll deliver that exquisite Bluray texture and specificity that many of us live for. And because it’s another opportunity to pay tribute to a 1965 film that was released in 1.66 — yet another defiance of the fascist edict that says all American-funded non-Scope films after April 1953 were released in 1.85.

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Two days ago Sasha Stone wrote about having seen The Guilt Trip on her way home from Cannes (or a bit more than three weeks ago) and being so knocked out by Barbra Streisand‘s performance as Seth Rogen‘s caring, nagging, somewhat hyper mom that she felt that Streisand was unjustly ignored by the awards handicappers. Yes, The Guilt Trip — a decent but not exactly eye-opening comedy in which Streisand delivered in a respectably earnest, punchy and spirited fashion. But not to the extent that anyone felt like jumping up and down and going “wow!…holy shit…Barbara brings it and then some!”

“Probably the worst crime perpetrated on actresses last year was the total omission of Barbra Streisand in The Guilt Trip,” Stone wrote. She was snubbed, Stone believes, because the tastemakers didn’t pick up the ball and run with it (“Streisand Streisand!”) and because The Guilt Trip was kind of a box-office fizzle. The only award that almost happened for Streisand was a Razzie nomination — “what an insult, what a tragedy,” Stone writes. The film “was an acting showcase for Streisand, a rarity of the industry overall, and one of the few films to ever offer up such a rich portrait of a mother/son relationship,” Stone adds. “They took the risk of making it be a buddy comedy of all things.”

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Man of Steel‘s 56% Rotten Tomatoes rating is comforting. A failing grade + almost half of the world is on my side. The dark solemn tone is what I liked about it. (Who needs Christopher Reeve-styled mirth? Done that.) And I liked the flashbacking and the avoidance of the Clark Kent/Daily Planet routine. (That’s being saved for the sequel.) Henry Cavill handles himself well — he’s a skilled and likable actor. So the first hour was more or less decent, and then Michael Shannon‘s General Zod and his homies came to earth to possess Superman’s DNA, and the film devolved into a boring, rib-vibrating destructo-slugfest. Arguments pro and con being sought.

The cutting on this Wolf of Wall Street trailer is brilliant. Accurately or otherwise, it persuades you that this…whaddaya call it, fingah-snappin’, humorous, jazzy, fuck-all energy (the chest-thump routine Between Leo DiCaprio and Matthew McConaughey) represents the personality of Martin Scorsese‘s upcoming film, which apparently is not a dramatic scolding exercise as much as a kind of dark existential comedy about living the life of madness when you can…go for it now, take the bust later. And then do your time, get out and give lectures about what an amoral scumbag you and your pallies were back in the day.

In one fell swoop, this trailer convinced me I’ll have a good time with the full-length version. Memo to Lynda Obst: Hollywood is broken, but obviously not totally. Did Thelma cut this? The Kanye accompaniment is dead perfect.

I thought this was going to be a riff about Morgan Freeman falling asleep during that Now You See Me junket interview. Nope…good-natured gluttony! Best College Humor video I’ve seen in ages. Originally posted on 5.6, it took me six weeks to catch up with it. Because, frankly, I tend to bypass this site. Recalculate. I loathed Now You See Me, by the way. Director Louis Letterier‘s decision to CG up the magic acts to such an absurd degree that you can’t possibly believe there’s any sleight-of-hand going on is the main problem. 85% to 90% of the time CG is a cancer. NYSM is totally dismissable garbage. Letterier is a dead man ’round these parts.

I can’t believe that the 1995 Sundance Film Festival happened over 18 years ago, but it did. Look at how many selections are considered indie classics (or at least semi-classics) today — Before Sunrise, The Usual Suspects, The Basketball Diaries, Shallow Grave, Safe, The Doom Generation, Brothers McMullen, Heavy, Little Odessa. This was when Sundance was still modest and manageable and not the hypefest it later became. Bryan Singer was hot as a pistol after that first Suspects screening — you couldn’t talk to him for more than 15 seconds before someone pushed their way in. Peter Chelsom‘s Funny Bones wasn’t a classic, but seeing it led to an opportunity to interview Jerry Lewis at the Stein Erickson. Two weeks later I withdrew from Entertainment Weekly reporting for a while so I could compose a whopper-sized Los Angeles article called “Right Face,” about the struggles of conservative-minded writers and actors in the film industry.

I was a decent drummer but no more than that. Okay, I was mediocre. I wanted to be Keith Moon or Charlie Watts but my gift lay elsewhere. Anyone who wants to be in a band when they’re in their early 20s can be in a band — they can give it a go and play local gigs and meet hot girls and have a good time, and if they’re as good as I was they’ll come to their senses and try something else after a year or less. Like movies or any art form, really good drummers constitute 5% to 10% of those who give it a shot. I was, however, a brilliant thigh drummer (and my old friends will back me up on this). My flat hand against the thigh was the snare, my cupped hands were the tom-toms, and the quarters and dimes in my pockets delivered the high-hat sound.

Some months ago producer and former 20th Century Fox honcho Peter Chernin spoke to producer Lynda Obst for her book, Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales of The New Abnormal in the Movie Business, and here’s how he described things: “[The] studios are frozen…terrified, not necessarily inappropriately, to do anything because they don’t know what the numbers look like.”

What they don’t know, more specifically, is “how to run a P & L” — a profit-and-loss statement for their board members — “because [they] don’t know what the DVD number is.’ The DVD number used to be half of the entire P & L!” Wait…today’s home video “numbers” are mainly about VOD and streaming before DVD/Bluray, right? Bluray is niche and DVD is strictly bargain-basement. I realize that the collapse of the DVD market four or five years ago cut heavily into profits and that VOD and streaming sales are delivering…what, a third of what the DVD market was at its height? But studio guys can’t at least project what VOD and streaming revenues will be?

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A couple of days ago the Sheffield Doc/Fest screened th World Premiere of Mark Levinson‘s Particle Fever, which is basically about (I think) six scientists who managed to precisely identify and define the Higgs Boson or “God particle” — a subatomic element that informs the size and shape and contour of all physical matter, the missing cornerstone of particle physics. Its existence was proven with “the most expensive science experiment in history” in which the Large Hadron Collider was launched.

When HB was first eyeballed last July I wrote that “this is almost like the discovery of the black monolith on the moon in 2001: A Space Odyssey. And yet it’s been there all along. The supreme scientific equation…proven.” But listen to Murch talk about the topic — he puts you to sleep! If I didn’t know what this doc is about I would avoid it like the plague after watching this Murch interview. I intend to see it, of course.

Where’s the God/mystical stuff? The mention of intelligent design? The Kubrick angle? My eyelids are drooping, Walter…you’re killing me.

“The ‘intelligent design’ crowd is celebrating this all across America, you bet. I despise what Christianity has become in this country, but I happen to believe in intelligent design also, in a sense. There is obviously a unified flow and an absolute cosmic commonality in all living things and all aspects of the architecture. The difference is that I don’t attach a Bible-belt morality to this overwhelming fact. To me God is impartial, celestial, biological, mathematical, amoral, unemotional, miraculous and breathtaking.

Most of the people you call your “friends” are not going to tell you what you need to hear. Most of them would rather support and good-vibe you, which makes them fair-weather friends by my yardstick. “Friends” are people you like and trust as far as it goes, and with whom you share stuff on the phone and whom you invite to dinners or parties or screenings…or vice versa. But if you’ve begun to look like a beefy, middle-aged lesbian due to compulsive carb indulgence and nightly drinking and not working out enough, your friends will never say “you’ve begun to look like a beefy, middle-aged lesbian — you need to change your program.”

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Two days left in Prague after today (i.e., Saturday), two and a half more in Paris and then back to New York City on Thursday. I’m not doing any tourist shit — strictly working, hiking around, eating grapes, tangerines and apples. Tonight I’m finally seeing Now You See Me, which opened yesterday or the day before.

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