Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight Rises (Warner Bros., 7.20) is the first superhero flick in a long time to have won me over so completely that it made me feel like a geek. It felt so overwhelmingly effective that I just folded up my crabby attitude and put it in a Fed Ex package and sent it off to a p.o. box in New Jersey. It kills, this thing. It really does. Knockout City. Except for the ending.

Ultra-disciplined pacing, dialogue that is clear and true and adds up (and which you can actually understand except for occasional Bane moments), breathtaking IMAX footage, whomping aural impact and an exhilarating movie-ish euphoria…Nolan wins, I capitulate, and Marshall Fine and the naysayers are just too picky and picayune.

Every line of dialogue, every shot, and every cut counts in this thing. The sheer discipline that went into The Dark Knight Rises got me off more than anything else. It’s made of high-quality fibre and is densely and expertly threaded like a world-class T-shirt or carpet. And it is eighteen or nineteen times better than either of the Joel Schumacher or Tim Burton Batman films. When they say “stop your bitching and just kick back and enjoy it for the movie-movie wows and adrenaline highs,” this is the kind of film they’re referring to — this is the gold and silver and bronze standard rolled into one.

TDKR is tight, tight, tight, tight. It breathes and moves and doesn’t feel turgid but God, it’s like it began as a four-hour movie and somehow Nolan whittled it down to 165 minutes. I can’t imagine how Nolan could tell the story he’s chosen and cram it all into a two-hour running time. It flew right the hell by, I can tell you that. (I was furious that I was forced to hit the head at the 75-minute mark.) And when something is flying by (as opposed to plodding or jogging by), you just stop caring about the problems and the speed-bumps, which TDKR certainly has if you really wanna go there.

I’m not going to argue with anyone who says The Dark Knight is a better film. Fine, I don’t care, whatever. And I could complain about some aspects that bothered me here and there (like the almost Taxi Driver-ish finale), but if a well-oiled, well-tuned movie of this sort is just blitzkrieging and rolling over you like a tank and you’re lying there and loving the sheer craft and the power and the will of it, all of this stuff falls by the wayside.

I don’t even know what TDKR is really “saying” in a cultural-political-philosphical vein and for all I know it is some kind of Republican fantasy action flick that guys like John Boehner will love, but I forgot about my political affiliation as I watched it. And that’s saying something.

I didn’t like The Avengers to begin with (I called it “corporate piss in a gleaming silver bucket”), but that movie is dog excrement compared to The Dark Knight Rises. Joss Whedon is a good guy now because of his ComicCon rant about the U.S. turning into Tsarist Russia, but don’t even mention his directorial skills alongside Nolan’s. Nolan knows, Nolan is a madman, Nolan delivers and will kick your ass around the block with this film. He and his co-writing brother Jonathan and co-story guy David Goyer…all in the weaving and the tight, tight, tight, tight, tight construction.

I won’t argue with anyone who’s claiming that TDKR doesn’t align all that well with what’s percolating today with the banksta gangstas and Occupy-ers and official lies about the spirit-soaring wonder of living in the USA today (which nobody with half a brain believes in any more), and I won’t argue against anyone who feels that Bane’s (i.e., Tom Hardy‘s) Escape From New York-style imprisonment of Manhattan is like some loony Republican fantasia about what could happen to this country if leftist hooligans and illegals were to have their way entirely. There are obvious echoes in the financial calamities that befall Buce Wayne’s empire, but I will say no more than that.

But I will argue against anyone who claims that The Dark Knight Rises doesn’t work. It has to be regarded as one of the year’s best so far, and I really don’t see how the Academy oldsters can dismiss it and not say “okay, we get it…we should have nominated The Dark Knight and we know we fucked up, so we’re going to nominate the finale…not with any expectation that it will win or anything, but because it absolutely deserves to be called one of the year’s finest films.”

This is a movie and a half that just carries you along like white-water. I went in with a bit of a pissy attitude — I’ll admit that now. I was waiting to be disappointed or underwhelmed in some Marshall Fine-like way, but it just refused to comply. A lady academic friend who came along said she felt bored, but for me it never sagged or wheezed or felt tedious or ponderous. I know I was in good hands almost immediately. By the half-hour mark I said, “Oh, the hell with it…this thing is wailing.”

It’s true about Joseph Gordon Levitt and especially Anne Hathaway delivering the best performances, but Christian Bale delivers as forcefully here as he did in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, so I think the credit should be spread around more evenly. And Hardy isn’t constrained or under-served by playing bad-guy Bane — I think he actually delivers a memorable bang-up performance considering that half of his face is covered by a breathing device. (There’s one tiny glimpse of his facial entirety at the end.) Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson, Marion Cotillard, Morgan Freeman, Ben Mendelsohn, Matthew Modine, Tom Conti…everyone delivers like a champ.

There’s no way you can see this except on a huge IMAX screen. I would love to go back and catch it in IMAX again this weekend, but I know I won’t be able to get in. And forget Bluray or watching it on an iPad or iPhone or any other substitute experience. And cheers to dp Wally Pfister, who’s one of the last hold-outs against digital photography. It may be that The Dark Knight Rises will be one of the last super-successful movies shot on celluloid, but what a finale! This is one terrific-looking film. And what a glorious thing not to have to deal with 3D glasses…pure pleasure!

“An explosion that Syria state television called a suicide bomb attack killed at least three top aides to President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday,” the N.Y. Times‘ Neil MacFarquhar and Dalal Mawad reported a couple of hours ago, “including the defense minister and Mr. Assad’s powerful brother-in-law.”

“The blast in Damascus, after three days of fighting in the capital, hit at the very military structure that has been directing the harsh repression of the 17-month-old uprising against Mr. Assad’s rule.

“The assassinations were the first of such high-ranking members of the elite since the revolt began and could represent a turning point in the conflict, analysts said. The nature and target of the attack strengthened the opposition’s claims that its forces have been marshaling strength to strike at the close-knit centers of state power.”

Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln will open limited on 11.9.12 and expand on 11.16, it was announced this morning. A Deadline report says that this decision by Disney, the film’s distributor, “puts Lincoln squarely in the midst of Oscar season”…as if it’s ever been anywhere else in the minds of absolutely everyone including Mohamed Morsi.

It’s been presumed all along that Lincoln would be an end-of-the-year holiday movie — now it’s a mid-fall thing. Which means that early-bird, Josh Horowitz-level New York screenings will start sometime in early October, I’m guessing, with people like me desperately begging and pleading to see it a couple of weeks later please-please-pretty please.

The idea, of course, is for Lincoln to win the Best Picture Oscar and Daniel Day Lewis, naturally, to win for Best Actor. Do you want to hear a bold, bold, bold idea? Show Lincoln to absolutely no one until opening day. Make them scream and pant for it and say “nope…sorry, kids…too bad…this is a really good film, but first and foremost it’s for the people…buy a ticket.”

Bold idea #2: New York Film Festival honcho Scott Foundas needs to rope and tie this steer and debut Lincoln as the NYFF closing night attraction on 10.14.12 — a little more than three weeks before opening day. Would that really be so crazy? If Spielberg has the goods and hasn’t mucked it up by “Spielbergizing” this semi-adaptation of Doris Kerns Goodwin‘s “Team of Rivals” and if DDL has really nailed Honest Abe in some kind of legendary jacklegged way, how can DreamWorks lose by showing it at the end of this highly prestigious festival?

I was wrong about the 1.66 aspect ratio of Rosemary’s Baby in yesterday’s rant about same. I spoke this morning with Ron Smith, Paramount’s former prez of preservation and restoration, and he said he agrees with this morning’s comment by High-Def Digest‘s “Josh Z” that the actual RB aspect ratio on the last DVD is 1.78 to 1. A miniscule difference compared to 1.85 to 1, but a difference nonetheless. But I definitely erred in claiming that Rosemary’s Baby was issued on DVD at some point with a 1.66 to 1 aspect ratio. **

And I was therefore wrong to say the Criterion has “cleavered” Rosemary’s Baby by deciding to release their forthcoming Bluray at 1.85. What I should have said is that they’ve Exacto-knived it — i.e., sliced it ever so slightly at the top and bottom of the frame so that watchers of their Bluray will notice a slight sliver of black on the top and bottom, or the same thing they’re now seeing when they pop in the Criterion Bluray of Anatomy of a Murder. And I still say they’re wrong for doing this. Because I believe in height and head space and air that characters in a film can breathe in and out.

So eff Criterion anyway, if you catch my drift. Why didn’t they just leave RB alone and at least go with Smith and Josh Z‘s 1.78 aspect ratio? Why did they have to slice it off ever so slightly? To what end? I’ll tell you to what end. To comply with the Bob Furmanek theology that the only way to figure this stuff out is to read trade reviews written at the opening of a given film’s release, and adhere to the reported aspect ratio — period, final, over and out.

But there’s another way of dealing wth this stuff, and that’s to run an open-matte print of the movie in a screening room and figure out what looks best based on what you want to see and what feels right.

If Mia Farrow and John Cassevettes are eating a steak dinner with Ruth Gordon and Sydney Blackmer in the latter’s apartment, you want to be able to see the steak, and if you can’t see the steak then you need to write a letter to Bob Furmanek and tell him to go eff himself and change the aspect ratio to whatever you need it to be in order to see the meat on the plate. Because Rosemary’s Baby dp William Fraker was, I believe, the kind of guy who liked to show the audience what the characters are eating, and I’m the kind of guy who likes to see that also.

If the Criterion Bluray shows the steak, fine — let’s put this issue to bed. But if it doesn’t show the steak, let’s at least acknowledge that it doesn’t do this and that the steak is lost and gone and that Criterion and Polanski and Furmanek have had a hand in this, and that I, at least, was one person who stood up and said, “Keep the steak! Let’s see the reddish-brown juice on the plate!”

I also still maintain that somewhere back in the leaf-swirl of my memory and down into the swamps of time with a face mask, flippers and snorkel, I saw Rosemary’s Baby at an aspect ratio that was higher and better than 1.85 or 1.78 — perhaps I saw it at a Parisian revival cinema where they still use 1.66 aperture plates? — and for whatever reason I retained that memory.

And when you blend this with so many people having maintained twelve years ago that the Rosemary’s Baby DVD was issued at 1.66 and the knowledge that the film was shot so that a European projectionist could have shown it at 1.66…throw all this together and I know I’m still more or less correct about the 1.66 thing.

I tried like hell to find anyone with a print of Rosemary’s Baby so I could snip out a frame and blow it up and post it on the site, just for the record. Three or four hours ago I called and spoke with Denise Fraker, widow of William Fraker (who passed in 2010), and she was very nice but could only offer a phone number for Bobby Byrne, who was Fraker’s camera operator on Rosemary’s Baby.

I’m going to re-post comment #74 from “Heinz, the Baron Krauss von Espy“…

Wells grabs the little man by the shoulders and draws him close.

WELLS: I’m gonna ask you one more time, kitty cat, what’s the aspect ratio?

POLANSKI (flatly): 1.85.

Wells strikes the director across the face…hard. He’s got his attention now.

WELLS: Stop lying to me, pally. What’s the aspect ratio?

POLANSKI: 1.66.

Crack! Wells slaps the man across the other cheek. Polanski stumbles backward, eyes wide with terror. The man is capable of anything.

POLANSKI: 1.85.

Another blow to the face. The words start to tumble out of Polanski’s mouth in an effort to placate the deranged blogger.

POLANSKI: 1.66! (smack) 1.85!! (smack) One…(smack, smack, smack)

Wells shakes Polanski furiously, consumed with rage. Polanski’s babbles uncontrollably, but manages to blurt out the truth.

POLANSKI: It was composed for 1.85 and protected for 1.66!!

A stunned Wells releases the director, sickened by his very touch. Polanski crumples to the ground in a heap and sobs uncontrollably.

** Having been shot in an open matte in-camera 1.37 aspect ratio, Rosemary’s Baby was presented in a 4 x 3 a.r. for TV airings in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, of course, as well as on VHS tape.

The commercial and cultural blitzkreig that precedes the opening of a major pop-fantasy film is always intimidating on a certain level, so hats off to those critics who’ve said “no” or “not quite” or “meh” to The Dark Knight Rises. The responses have been otherwise positive if not ecstatic across the board so far (86% on Rotten Tomatoes. 81% on Metacritic) but it’s healthy, I think, to show the corporates they can’t just rumble into town on tanks and just roll over everyone and everything. It’s a Republican fantasy, this film — keep that in mind.

In any event a Hollywood Elsewhere salute is hereby offered to Marshall Fine, AP critic Christy Lemire (“an epic letdown”), Badass Digest‘s Devin Faraci, Daily Mail critic Chris Tookey, Movies.com’s James Rocchi, Urban Cinefile’s Andrew Urban and Louise Keller, Time Out‘s David Fear and to a certain extent TheWrap‘s Alonso Duralde.

I learned many years ago that if you speak critically or disparagingly of any major fanboy movie, you will receive a fair amount of hate mail. This happened to me when I trashed The Phantom Menace 13 years ago. I realized then and there that fanboy haters are not only intemperate but on the subliterate side, and so I immediately dismissed any notion of replying or debating. So let’s just ignore the idiots who reportedly threatened (so to speak) Fine and Lemire for their negative reviews.

I love this portion of Devin Faraci’s review:

“Is The Dark Knight Rises any good? The movie entertains. It has a James Bond sensibility where hugely improbable things occur but you shrug them off. The movie is also clunky and structured strangely and — with the exception of Michael Caine‘s Alfred — emotionally empty. The stakes have weirdly never felt lower than they do in The Dark Knight Rises. Nolan keeps the movie going from scene to scene, but the momentum is all cinematic, not narrative.

“As the movie wrapped up with five final minutes that play out exactly like Superhero Hype forum fanfic, I wasn’t hating it. I hadn’t been squirming in my seat. I thought a lot of it was dumb, I laughed at things that probably weren’t meant to be laughed at, and I experienced a few moments of deflation when I realized the movie had nothing to actually say. But I had also been caught up in it, even when it didn’t quite work or make much sense. I liked that Nolan went a little broader, even if that broadness occasionally clashed with his efforts to be ‘realistic.’

“I just don’t care either way. After being profoundly disappointed by the way Batman Begins turned out, and after really enjoying most of The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises evokes no strong feelings in me. It’s large and busy and convinced of its own profundity, but in the end it’s a big shrug.”

This Bain/Bane pic, posted a few hours ago on buzzfeed.com and tweeted by Michael Hayes, arrives at a perfect moment, which is to say a perfectly negative (dare I say calamitous?) one for Mitt Romney. The clamor about his Bain Capital history plus his refusal to release tax returns is burning up the cable news channels only days before Tom Hardy‘s performance as the evil, one-note-ish Bane is about to sink into the consciousness of tens of millions coast to coast.

On one level the Bain/Bane meme is idiotic and dismissable (it would be another thing, of course, if Hardy’s character was spelled Bain) but on another broader, vaguer, sloppier level The Dark Knight Rises will rub it in all the same. Bain/Bane = predatory bad news sociopaths. This is Romney’s worst week so far — right here, right now. Chris Nolan didn’t mean to assault or undermine his presidential campaign, but he has. Or will within days.

7.17 Update: My assertion in this piece, which posted on Monday, 7.16, that a previous DVD of Rosemary’s Baby was issued at an aspect ratio of 1.66 to 1 is incorrect. The rest of this article is fine. I’ve addressed the wrongo in a piece that ran Tuesday, 7.17, called “Limited Mea Culpa.”

Original 7.16 article: Today the Criterion Collection announced that, as rumored, they’ll be releasing a new Bluray/DVD of Rosemary’s Baby (’68), based on a high-definition digital restoration approved by director Roman Polanski. And the aspect ratio — hold on to your hats — will be 1.85…Jesus! I feel like I’m Rosemary Woodhouse on my bed with a scaly Satan lying on top of me, and I’m going “this isn’t a dream…this is really happening!”

The Rosemary’s Baby Bluray won’t be masked at 1.66, which has been the reigning aspect ratio for decades, certainly on the last DVD and on the laser disc before that. And not 1.78, which would perfectly fit the 16 x 9 screen. No — Criterion had to go full-fascist and adhere to the 1.85 aspect ratio that all films have been “officially” screened at commercially in the U.S. since April 1953.

If Rosemary’s Baby had been released in Great Britain, we would today be looking forward to a 1.66 version from Criterion next October. John Schlesinger‘s Sunday Bloody Sunday (’71) was also announced today as a Criterion Bluray release, and it will be masked at 1.66.

I’m horrified that Polanski, who shot 1965’s Repulsion at 1.66 (and was presented at that a.r on Criterion’s Bluray) and clearly shot Rosemary’s Baby with a 1.66 a.r. in mind — the DVD shows that each and every frame is exquisitely composed at that particular shape — has apparently approved the meat-cleavering of his own film! Criterion’s statement that he “approved” this new Bluray obviously indicates that Polanski has told Criterion “sure, go ahead, whack off the tops and bottoms…fine with me!”

I’m purple-faced with rage. I’ve got stomach acid. I’m spitting saliva on the rug. Why am I, sitting at a desk in West Hollywood, trying to protect and defend Rosemary’s Baby as it ought to be seen while its director sits in Paris, shrugging his shoulders and saying “whatever”?

On 3.21.12 I wrote that Polanski “is a European traditionalist at heart, and while he knew that the film would be projected at 1.85 by U.S. exhibitors, per the standard, I strongly suspect that he composed it for 1.66. Look at the 1.66 version of the film that William A. Fraker shot. There are no acres of space above anyone’e head. It’s perfect at 1.66. It’s just right.

It’s not just me claiming that 1.66 is the preferred aspect ratio, and that precedents have been established. 12 years ago DVD Talk‘s Geoffrey Kleinman noted that a 2000 DVD version presented the film at 1.66 to 1. Some wingnut at Turner Classic Movies declared a few years back that Rosemary’s Baby‘s aspect ratio is 1.66. And a commenter at Velocity Reviews asked a while back why Polanski’s film was completely occupying a 16 x 9 screen when a 1.66 a.r. would dictate windowbox bars on the side.

I know how this one is going to go. The fascists are going to carpet-bomb me with their usual goose-stepping crap and I’m going to respond with my usual counter-accusations, etc. It’s an old hymn. I’m no fan of Roman Polanski today, let me tell you. How could he do this to his own film?

The clip below is seemingly cropped at 1.85. It’s not catastrophic, but it’s obviously a bit too cramped. It doesn’t breathe. The framing feels confining.

This popped through in late April. I only paid attention for the first time today. A friend tells me it’s really popular with her daughter and her friends. If it’s popular in a bigger way (and I’ve seen no proof that it is) then Shia LaBeouf might be in some kind of trouble. This video may be a hint of an indication of popular currents in the way that a defaced subway poster tends to mean a little something.

It appears that Douglas Aarniokoski‘s The Day (Anchor Bay, 8.29), a post-apocalyptic actioner with a fresh young cast, has been shot in either extremely desaturated color or plain black-and-white. That in itself makes we want to see it. The color in John Hillcoat‘s The Road, which was the same bowl of gruel, was gray-ash…but this seems totally monochrome. If it’s not, and if it has at least some color, why indicate otherwise in the trailer?

Some IMDB guy called “JeffersMornngToYou” who caught The Day at a “Midnight Madness” screening at September’s Toronto Film Festival called it “spectacular…not just violence but an in-depth look at the depravity that would come from an apocalypse…really character driven, this movie definitely makes you think.”

For whatever reason Josh Radnor‘s Liberal Arts (IFC Films, 9.14), one of the surprises of the Sundance Film Festival (for me at least), has no website up. Isn’t that odd for a film that’s coming out two months hence? And it’s a very decent dramedy — mature, intelligent, well-written, non-cloying, well-acted.

The indication, obviously, is that IFC Films isn’t feeling that enthusiastic, but the film, directed and written by Radnor, played really well at the Eccles screening I attended last January. People were levitating.

Update: IFC Films bigwig Ryan Werner says “everything is coming momentarily on Liberal Arts. We’ve been working with Josh this summer on the materials, etc. And we just did a NYC screening and party at BAM Cinemafest and the film played huge. We remain super enthusiastic.”

Liberal Arts “is a step up in somewhat (but not quite) the same way Annie Hall was a step up for Woody Allen…almost” I wrote on 1.23.12. “Mature, at times melancholy, dialogue and character-driven, not overtly ‘comedic’ (and thank God for that). I really didn’t care for Radnor’s happythankyoumoreplease, so I went expecting not too much and was pleasantly surprised.”

Radnor plays a bright, neurotic, 30-something Manhattanite who’s in a kind of dead-end place, career- and relationship-wise. He’s invited back to his university (somewhere in lower Vermont or New Hampshire, as I recall**) and slips into a really nice platonic thing with a 19-year-old sophomore (Elizabeth Olsen). It naturally occurs to both to take things to the next level, and at this juncture Radnor starts getting all glum and guilt-trippy himself about the wrongness of doing a little 19 year-old lamb. But hold on. When Radnor’s character turns 41 or 42 Olsen’s character will be 29 or 30 or thereabouts — what’s the problem with that? Life is short. It can’t last? Maybe not, but what in life is guaranteed to be a long-term thing?

42 year-old Woody Allen had no problem doing 17 year-old Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan, and in some ways she was more emotionally mature than he. I myself had a really rich and moving thing with a 19 year-old when I was 28, and I never had a moment’s concern and neither did she. Well, I did have a concern when she wound up dumping me after 18 months or so. I was devastated but that’s life. All’s fair, rough and tumble, no assurances.

Liberal Arts costars Richard Jenkins, Allison Janney, John Magaro and Elizabeth Reaser.

** Liberal Arts was actually shot in Columbus and Gambier, Ohio — no Manhattan, no New England.