The only serious standout element in JJ Abrams‘ Star Trek Into Darkness, the only thing that makes you sit up and go “whoa, wait…this is good,” is the lead villain performance by Benedict Cumberbatch. The poor guy has a somewhat oddly shaped face and weird demon-cat eyes so he’ll never play the good guy, but he’s a serious world-class actor with a kind of young Richard Burton quality and an energy field that just grabs hold and lifts all boats.

Cumberbatch is playing an impassioned, duplicitous intellectual-terrorist-with-feelings named John Harrison (there’s more, actually, but this all that I can divulge), and of course he has to end up vanquished, but he’s so volcanically vital and charismatic that I wish he wasn’t stuck having to fulfill the fate of a baddy-waddy. I wish the rule book could have been thrown out in his case.

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Various public screenings skeds for Cannes 2013 — competition, non-competition, Un Certain Regard — were made available today. (No skeds yet for Critics Week or Directors Fortnight.) An exceptionally rich and demanding festival with very little relaxation time. The 5.15 screening of The Great Gatsby (Warner Bros, 5.10) is going to seem fairly anti-climactic for me with the critical verdict already in and the coming weekend’s box-office numbers the only thing left to ponder. If TGG dies or even underperforms this weekend (will it?) the Cannes showings will feel like a wake.

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“In Frances Ha, Scene 63 is 28 seconds long. We did 42 takes in total, two hours of shooting in a bathroom with no breaks or pauses other than for direction and blocking. In 50 days of shooting, we averaged around 35 takes per scene. Most independent films shoot in 25 days with, at most, 10 takes per scene. A take in this case is the scene — the entirety of the above printed text, acted from beginning to end. Meaning that Mickey Sumner, playing Sophie, and I, playing Frances, said those words and performed those actions 42 times in a row.

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A thought just hit me about the soundtrack of Alfonso Cuaron‘s Gravity (Warner Bros., 10.4), a floating, zero-gravity disaster drama with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. It should ideally emphasize the same kind of minimal sound design that Stanley Kubrick used for 2001: A Space Odyssey. No crashes, no impact sounds…nothing. It almost certainly won’t as audiences have been trained since Star Wars to expect the opposite. But it would be great if an alternate all-but-silent version could be offered on the Bluray.

At the very least Steven Price‘s soundtrack would do well to show restraint.

“Don’t let go” is an okay copy line. It’s fitting. (I’m saying this having read the script.) It recalls an old Roy Hamilton tune from the ’50s, but without the slightest echo or linkage.

The Saul Bass online tribute movement continues unabated with Google getting into the act. They posted this yesterday to acknowledge Bass’s 93rd birthday.

In one corner, a 5.6 rant by Toronto Standard‘s Alan Jones about Zach Braff‘s Kickstarter campaign. In another, Braff talks to KCRW’s Kim Masters about the how and why of it. Honestly? What Braff says sound sane and reasonable. Definitely worth a listen.

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Maybe after I finally see Ryan Coogler‘s film in Cannes (after being shut out of two screenings at Sundance 2013), I’ll understand why the title was changed by Weinstein Co. marketers from Fruitvale to Fruitvale Station. I’m guessing it’s because Fruitvale sounds rural, like something to do with agriculture and working on a fruit farm, and Fruitvale Station sounds more urban. Pic is based on the true story of Oscar Grant, a young guys who was killed by the bulls at the Fruitvale rapid transit station in the Oakland area on New Year’s Day in 2009.

My disappointed response to the lackluster look of The Great Escape at last month’s TCM Classic Film Festival has been echoed by the reviews of the MGM/Fox Bluray, which came out yesterday. It’s relatively rare when Bluray reviewers will actually say “this blows,” but High-Def Digest’s Michael S. Palmer and Bluray.com’s Michael Reuben have essentially said this in their reviews. DVD Beaver’s Gary W. Tooze was more obliging, but he tends to flatter almost everything he sees.

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How many years have I been belly-aching about the absence of a From Here to Eternity Bluray, despite Sony’s Grover Crisp having remastered this 1953 Best Picture winner sometime in early to mid 2009? My first “where’s the Bluray?” piece ran in November 2009. I’ve run two or three follow-ups since. Anyway, the endless delaying is over. Sony Home Video is finally releasing it on a Region 2 British disc on 10.7.13. Perhaps a Region A U.S. version will follow a few months later.

I finally saw Crisp’s high-def version on Turner Classic Movies last February. It’s clearly a significant enhancement over the DVD version that everyone has been looking at for the last 11 years or so. “Prettier”, less contrasty, smoother skin tones, greater specificity (especially in terms of the fabrics, hair follicles and the glistening look of rain-soaked streets) and so on. I like my Blurays to “pop” above and beyond what i’m used to from DVD versions, and Crisp’s Eternity definitely does that.