“Boorman and the Devil” Triggered Hearty Laughter at Brooklyn Horror Fest

by

My Venice Film Festival viewing of David Kittredge‘s excellent Boorman and the Devil was greeted with blissful vibes and subdued awe. Critics and industry folks are like that — their emotions always in check.

But when it played last Wednesday night at the Brooklyn’s Nitehawk Cinema under the aegis of the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, the crowd was frequently laughing at the litany of blunders and terrible misfortunes endured by director John Boorman as he attempted to shoot the artistically ambitious Exorcist II: The Heretic during the summer and fall of ’76, followed months later by the buckshot scorn of critics and paying audiences when it opened on 6.17.77.

For Kittredge’s doc dispenses gallows humor in spades, and everyone over the age of ten knows what it’s like when things start going really badly…laughter is the only sane response when fate and the gods have allied against you…when a bad luck streak not only won’t stop but gets worse and worse.

Teal Vandals Have Infected Criterion’s 4K “Eyes Wide Shut”

by

The ghost of Stanley Kubrick is choking, hissing and sputtering over the apparent teal-tinting in portions of Criterion’s 4K Eyes Wide Shut disc, which pops on 11.25.25.

I’ve seen Eyes Wide Shut at least eight or nine times (twice theatrically, once or twice on DVD, the rest via WHE’s unrated 2008 Bluray), and the blue-and-amber nocturnal accent scheme has always been the same.

Nocturnal accent colors adorning the wooden window-sill-and-frames of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman‘s bedroom, the window sill-and-frame lighting outside of Sydney Pollack‘s pool room salon, the bluish-amber tints in the Harford kitchen…we’re talking lots of blue and amber. Unmistakably.

Remember the iron-bar gates of that Long Island estate where the orgy was held? They were painted vivid, bordering-on-radiant blue, and with a fresh coast of paint at that.

But the proverbial teal monster has reared its revoltingly ugly and disgusting head in Criterion’s forthcoming 4K version of this 1999 film.

A DVD Beaver rendering of a still from that daylit scene (Cruise staring at the gates) shows a distinct teal flavoring — the gates were luminous plain blue in an older version, but now they’re unmistakably a dark somber teal-green.

Even the frequently obsequious and kowtowing Gary W. Tooze, owner and proprietor of DVD Beaver, admits in his review that the Criterion 4K “does have some teal-leaning.”

Quickie “Blob Me Tender” FX Are 20 Times Better Than ’58 Original’s

by

“For the diner scene, a photograph of the building was put on a gyroscopically operated table onto which cameras had been mounted. The table was shaken and the oozy Blob stuff rolled off. When the film negative was printed in reverse, it appeared to be oozing over the building.

“The Blob was filmed in color and projected at a 1.66 ratio, then known as the ‘Paramount format’.” — from The Blob‘s Wiki page.

If A Film is About An Approaching Nuclear Missile…

by

In Sidney Lumet‘s Fail Safe (’64), New York City gets nuked at the very end. In Kathryn Bigelow‘s A House of Dynamite (now streaming on Neflix), Chicago is in the nuclear crosshairs.

Fair question for those who’ve seen Lumet’s 61-year-old film: What would your reaction have been if there was no dramatization or depiction of the terrible nuclear climax? What if Lumet had decided to cut the last 8 to 10 minutes?

Read more

HE’s Best Supporting Actor Keepers

by

The top five or six will do, thanks.

Stellan Skarsgard‘s flawed, charmingly neurotic, brazenly egoistic dad in Sentimental Value is likely to win.

Sean Penn‘s Lt. Col, Steven J. Lockjaw is a broad, stiff-backed caricature and not really a performance that yields any depth or sensitivity, but he’ll be nominated anyway because there’s a lot of lickspittle One Battle After Another kowtowing going on right now.

You know which OBAA player should be nominated in this category? Benicio del Toro‘s “Sensei”.

Paul Mescal‘s William Shakespeare in Hamnet will be nominated — I recognize this, no disputing.

Adam Sandler‘s Jay Kelly performance as a manager of a flaky big-name Hollywood actor deserves to be nominated, and he will be.

I sill haven’t seen Deliver Me From Nowhere, but it’s been obvious for several weeks that Jeremy Strong‘s performance as Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau…it’s been obvious from the get-go that he’d be nominated.

Try To Comprehend The Trump Ballroom’s Vulgarity

by

In my head the planned Trump ballroom, to be built where the now-eradicated East Wing of the White House recently stood, is an architectural hall of pus and fascist hubris.

Donald Trump is a temporary resident of a grand historical home that is owned by taxpayers. He didn’t have the right to mangle the traditional look of the place. He was obliged to respect the historical continuity aspect, and instead he said “fuck it, I’m going to Mar a Lago this place.”

In my mind the Trump ballroom is a spiritual kin of the giant Stay–Puft Marshmallow Man, whom we all remember from the totally unfunny third act of Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters.

Until the sudden bulldozing of the East Wing and the revealing of the ballroom’s architectural scheme, I had taken vague comfort in the notion of the Trump presidency being theoretically finite and, you know, at least potentially a done deal (i.e., history) as of 1.20.29.

But the Stay-Puft ballroom will probably endure, and that likely fact has deeply enraged me. My blood is boiling.

If Gavin Newsom wins in ‘28, it must be torn the fuck down. I’m serious. Bulldoze the damn thing and rebuild a new East Wing, one that will presumably exude a semblance of taste, restraint and proper decorum.

And if Newsom won’t destroy it, the French 75 should figure some way to dynamite it. This sounds crazy, I realize, but I would honestly not have a huge problem with Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Bob Ferguson using a drone to…I don’t know, drop a firebomb or something at 3:30 am.

The drawings/models of the older, classic White House vs. the Trump remodelling were copied from a 10.22.25 N.Y. Times story.

“On Eighth Avenue, No One Can Hear You Scream”

by

I have a faint memory of Spy magazine running a smirk piece about the Manhattan-based Troma Entertainment, which made cheap-ass, Z-grade schlocksploitation horror comedies.

The article appeared sometime in the mid to late ‘80s, and was ostensibly written by a guy who wrote an actual script for Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman, the predators who ran Troma.

Does anyone recall this article? Or was it published by someone else?

Obsessive Grain Fetishists

by

There’s something really and truly wrong with 4K Bluray enthusiasts who get almost sexually aroused by stand-out, golfball-sized grain. Or, as I’ve called it for many years, “Egyptian grainstorms” by way of delta swamp mosquitos.

I would love it if WHE would release a 4K Eyes Wide Shut in a boxy (1.37:1) format.

Best Wedding Scene Ignored By Pinterest Dingbats

by

The wedding scene that concludes The Best Years of Our Lives is easily the most emotionally affecting in Hollywood history…easily. And yet a list of the 15 Most Pinned Wedding Scenes on Pinterest ignored it in favor of…not worth mentioning. I’m not saying the people who voted are idiots, but they’re certainly ignorant.