“A neglected house gets an unhappy look. This one had it in spades. It was like that old woman in Great Expectations, that Miss Havisham and her rotting wedding dress and her torn veil, taking it out on the world because she had been given the go-by.” — Joe Gillis (William Holden) in Billy Wilder‘s Sunset Boulevard.

Now that I’ve seen the trailer for Mike Newell and David Nicholls‘ adaptation of Charles Dickens‘ Great Expectations, I have a fairly clear idea what the movie will more or less be. I didn’t exactly beat a path to see it at in Toronto. (Or, to put it more precisely, I passed.) Rope of Silicon‘s Brad Brevet went and called it “perfectly serviceable, but overall nothing that offers a shift to the landscape.”

Right now David O. Russell‘s The Silver Linings Playbook feels to me like the slam-dunkiest Best Picture contender for six reasons — it portrays “crazy” as a state of exceptional openness and illumination in the same way R.D. Laing regarded schizophrenia, it’s fast and sharp and all the actors are “in the zone,” it reflects an anxious and cranked-up psychology that many of us share on some level, it’s funny and touching and a kind of ballsy ghoulash, it’s going to be a huge hit and, last but not least, Manohla Dargis has expressed semi-dismissive comments. That, for me, is fuel. That puts gas in my tank.

I’m obviously aware that many believe that Ben Affleck‘s Argo is just as strong or at least running a close second, but you can’t give a Best Picture Oscar for just craft and the director having grown in skill. It has to have something else going on, some kind of echo or undercurrent that punches through and adds up to something more than the sum of its parts. Boil out the patriotism and Argo is just a satisfying caper film, and yes, I know — nobody wants to hear that and nobody will listen.

And you have to put The Master up there, although we all know it won’t win the Best Picture Oscar (although I can imagine more than a few critics groups giving it their top prize).

And I’m infuriated that people are putting down Joe Wright‘s Anna Karenina, which delivers the kind of bold and exhilarating chops that I live for. It’s the kind of film that hasn’t been made in a long time, and what a rush to encounter it like I did in Toronto, cold and unprepared. You have to embrace it if you have the slightest interest in movies that step outside and say to themselves, “Let’s throw caution to the wind.” This movie is Ken Russell reborn in the most delirious sense of that term, and Dargis — Dargis again! — has called it a “travesty” — I can’t remember her ever sounding this rash or savage or dead effing wrong. This is my idea of a Best Picture contender.

And we can’t forget Benh Zeitlin‘s Beasts of the Southern Wild…right? The little movie that could, should and probably will.

The Five Big Unseens are Tom Hooper‘s Les Miserables (12.7), Robert Zemeckis‘s Flight (11.2), Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s Zero Dark Thirty (12.14), Ang Lee‘s Life of Pi (11.21), and Steven Spielberg Lincoln, which I’m getting a really bad feeling about.

That’s ten titles, and I have a hunch that the weak sisters, no offense, are going to be Lincoln, Life of Pi, possibly Beasts of the Southern Wild (but maybe not) and possibly Anna Karenina if Dargis’s view carries inordinate weight.

I would have been rather surprised if David O. Russell‘s The Silver Linings Playbook hadn’t won the Toronto Film Festival’s BlackBerry People’s Choice Award. (Ben Affleck‘s Argo was the runner-up.) Past People’s Choice Awards have gone to American Beauty, The King’s Speech and Slumdog Millionaire.

Now all the Weinstein Co. has to do is (a) lay low between now and early November but also (b) put out a new trailer that reflects the second half of the film and not just the raggedy-jaggedy first half, but at the same time doesn’t scare off the girly-girls who like their romantic relationship flicks to be a little bit dumb.

“P.T. Anderson prefers to think of his Master characters as unrequited lovers, which results in a subtle, homoerotic tension that is triangulated in the film by the presence of Dodd’s loyal, steely wife,” etc. Okay, fine but why the horizontal taffy-pull distortion? Never mess with correct proportionality, ever. And no milkshakes.

Last Thursday’s announcement about Kent Jones and Robert Koehler being hired as dual replacements for outgoing Film Society of Lincoln Center senior programming hotshot Richard Pena can be taken two ways. One, as a resurgence of monk-dweeb power within the FSLC — a return to that somewhat insular, half-sleepy, curated, less-than-dynamic mode that Pena’s stewardship seemed to represent in years past. Or two, as an “exciting” new collaboration with nary a dweeb or monkish thought to be heard, least of all from Jones.

Jones will be the new director of programming of the NY Film Festival and Koehler will serve as year-round programmer for the Film Society of Lincoln Center. They’re both good fellows, extremely bright and knowledgable, etc. But it could be argued that they nonetheless represent a somewhat cloistered aesthetic. I could be wrong, but they seem to represent a return to the way things were before the Scott Foundas esprit de corps of the last two and a half to three years.

I asked a guy who is one of the high falutin’, vaguely crabby, vaguely know-it-all dweeb fraternity, a guy who’s in with the monastic “in” crowd (i.e., Jones, Gavin Smith, Amy Taubin, Koehler, Pena and their friend-supporter Manohla Dargis, film critic for the N.Y. Times). And I basically asked him if he could provide input into a working theory that after two and a half to three years, the cineastes in monk robes are back in power at the FSLC, and that the appearance, at least, of a Foundas flirtation or experiment, if you will, has been dealt a vote of “not yet” and “too soon” and “your time will come.”

I’ve written all pertinent parties about this and none of them are replying so take this with a grain.

Foundas was never that high on the totem pole — I get that — but he felt to me like the new way and Jones…well, I shouldn’t generalize, should I? Scott’s title is currently Associate Programming Director, but for myself Scott seemed like the most visible face and voice of things during NYFF of 2010, 2011 and 2012.

It seemed to me that it was Scott and NYFF programmer Todd McCarthy who landed The Social Network two years ago (although Jones, I’ve heard, had been nurturing a Fincher relationship beforehand) and in my view they seemed to energize the NYFF out of that cloistered 65th Street dweeb aesthetic — a mode that Pena’s stewardship seemed to nurture in years past.

You can’t deny Scott wasn’t at least highly visible. He introduced all the movies at public and press screenings and did many of the post-screening q & a’s, just as Richard Roud used to do in the old days. He was always at the ready when there was a question. (I never spoke to Pena.) He’s been, to me, the most visible and dynamic guy with FSLC, and now that Jones has the top NYFF job and Koehler has also been hired nobody has said “boo.” Scott’s name hasn’t even been mentioned in the announcement stories about Jones-Koehler.

I gather that Film Society of Lincoln Center executive director Rose Kuo felt she would be safer if she deferred to the established dweebs and in so doing sidestep the arguably risky move of giving the job to the youngish and untested Foundas. For the sake of her own political footing, she did the default thing.

The guy I asked about this basically said “not so fast.” He says things are a little more complicated than the way I understand them. But the well-liked Foundas is cool and in good shape, he said, and is going to keep plugging along in a vital way. And that he’s young and therefore time is on his side, etc. And secondly, he said, Jones is not so dweebish, really, and that he understands the basic drill about showmanship and putting a little rock ‘n’ roll into the NYFF lineup, particularly the opening and closing showcases. And lastly that Jones and Foundas working together is going to be a win-win. Fine.

Coming Soon’s Ed Douglas is reporting that Oscar Isaac hinted to journos at a Ten Years brunch today that Inside Llewyn Davis, the Coen brothers film about the Greenwich Village folk scene that is not based on the life and times of Dave Van Ronk, will open later this year. Isaac “stars” in the film, so to speak, along with Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake, Garret Hedlund, F. Murray Abraham, Adam Driver and John Goodman.

The almost-worthless IMDB says it’ll open limited in December 2012. Wikipedia has been reporting for months that Paramount is the distributor, which means nothing. But it does seem as if Llewyn Davis will come out later this year…good.

Forget what I wrote about the Llewyn Davis script earlier this year at your peril.

This is three or four days old, but Nick Wrigley (a.k.a. “Quigley”) has posted a review of the typo problems with the opening-credit sequence in new Frenzy Bluray, which is part of the problem-plagued, recently postponed Hitchcock Masterpiece Bluray set. Here’s a visual that shows some of the issues:

Wrigley reviews many of the other Hitchcock Bluray discs as well, including Rear Window.

“Extremely impressive,” he says. “The detail is incredible [and] the colors [are] strong, beautiful, and consistent. Grain is very fine and looks like it’s being suppressed by DNR in some shots, but I detect a more sensible approach here. It’s used on some shots more than others and is not really a problem, but I have no idea what they were wrestling with.

“It feels like a lot of work has gone into it, with difficult materials (the grain structure of these early stocks was apparently quite large, but that’s not apparent at all on the Bluray), and the result is impressive.

“I spotted four very brief noticeably dupey shots at 00:29:44 & 00:29:59 of Lisa, at 00:54:33 of Jeff, and a quick shot of Doyle at the end 01:50:30. All four are poor quality and quite jarring because 99.9% of the rest of the film looks so stunning.

“This disc was a pleasure and a treat. I’ll give it 8.5/10 in my own little marking system.”

With Alfred Hitchcock pushing through in a renewed way (HBO’s The Girl, Fox Searchlight’s Hitchcock + the Universal Bluray boxset glitch) and a new Strangers on a Train Bluray streeting on 10.9, it’s an opportune time to re-savor the Strangers finale. I was just doodling around last night and there it was again, reminding how quickly and suddenly things can fall apart and people can lose their reason.

The carousel crash is a very impressive special effect for 1951, but it’s not half bad by 2012 standards either. The timing and rhythm of the montage — the cutting together of all the pieces — is just right, and I shudder to think of how this scene would be edited today.

And it’s all propelled by weird mistakes and shocking ineptitude. A cop fires at a mere suspect in a murder case, and in so doing fires right into a carousel with kids on it? The old man crawling underneath the wildly spinning carousel, and then he doesn’t save the day at the end — he reverses the engine too suddenly and thereby worsens the panic and chaos and kills at least one passenger (i.e., Robert Walker‘s Bruno Antony) and God knows how many others.

My favorite bit is (a) the panicking mother wailing “my little boy!” and then cutting to the kid having the time of his life, and then (b) a second bit with Walker almost throwing the kid off and Farley Granger preventing this.

And I love that vaguely horrific, early Bunuelian flavor in those one or two inserts of the carousel horse heads bobbing up and down.

It’s not just Daniel Day Lewis‘s decision to channel Matthew Modine in his voicing of Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg‘s forthcoming biopic. My insect antennae are also picking up hints of that old Spielbergian schmaltz, particularly among the strains of John Williams‘ music. I’m hoping for something deeper and grander but we all know who and what Spielberg is, and I smell trouble, real trouble. That’s not a prediction as I know nothing and trailers almost always misrepresent. But the signs aren’t good.

It’s been known for eighteen months or so that Fox Home Video has been working on a less digitally scrubbed, more celluloid-looking HD remastering of Franklin Schaffner‘s Patton. This is to correct the “bad” Patton Bluray that came out in June 2008, and which grain purists and tech dweebs claimed was far too shiny and had removed all kinds of detail from the original film.

(l.) Jacket art for “shiny” Patton Bluray that came out in June 2008; (r.) jacket for a presumably more film-like, less-digitally-scrubbed Patton Bluray that will street on 11.6.

The grainmonks were correct — the “bad” Patton did remove data in order to present a sharp, spiffy DNR’d image. Bluray plebians like myself didn’t mind the shiny Patton that much (and neither have 97% of the owners of that Bluray), but I understand and respect the grainmonk complaints.

In any event, Fox Home Video is issuing a new, somewhat grainier, presumably more detailed Patton on November 6th.

I for one am looking forward to this new, somewhat grainier but presumably more detailed and textured Patton Bluray, but I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t confess to being a little bit scared of what might be in store. Every time a grainmonk-approved Bluray remastering comes out, it seems, I always feel a bit disappointed if not horrified. I hated WHV’s 70th anniversary Casablanca re-do, which took a perfectly fine-looking, slightly DNR’ed version and turned it into a digital-mosquito grainstorm movie. Schaffner’s film was shot on large-format 65mm widescreen, of course, and should render a dazzling amount of clarity without any grain concerns so here’s hoping.

Here are Robert Harris‘s original comments, posted on 6.9.09, about the “bad” Patton Bluray:

“It doesn’t look like film. It looks like scrubbed data, shorn of its high frequency information. I’m certain that the film has more information than I’m seeing. The image is impeccably clean, with only an occasional bit of errant dirt, which is welcome. But it seems to be yet another example of film that no longer looks like film.”

Yesterday Universal Home Video announced a postponement of the Blu-ray release of Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection from the previous street date of 9.25 to 10.30. “Certain imperfections with the product have come to light and, as a result, we are delaying the release date to correct these points,” the release explained. “Our goal is to always deliver the best possible product to our consumers.”

As I understand it one of the imperfections that Universal is presently trying to correct is the color on the Vertigo Bluray (i.e., James Stewart’s aubergine-colored suit which used to be brown, the electric blue LSD suits worn at the inquest scene, the incorrect orange tint during the main-title sequence).

It’s a mark of character and integrity, of course, when a large company is willing to suck it in and admit error and try to improve a product before putting it on the market. But of course, Universal came to this realization only after voices outside the company (i.e., guys like Nick Wrigley and myself) saying this sucks and that looks awful and what’s wrong here?, etc. You’d think that if they had any pride they’d know what was wrong by their own reckonings and wouldn’t have to hear it from journalists. Alas, this is what major corporate video outfits are like — i.e., basically hermetic and ultra-political and often in denial when technical problems are evident. They don’t want to know about problems that they don’t want to know about unless they’re forced to deal with them.

I arrived at my Manhattan loft rental yesterday afternoon at 5 pm following a 40-minute passport line (thanks, guys!) and then a grueling, traffic-snarled 75-minute bus ride from Newark Airport. (Next time I’ll taken the air train to Newark and then a train to Penn Station.) Dinner with pallies at Friend of a Farmer, and then gelato at Eataly, a massive, brightly-lit Italian food deli-restaurant, followed by ping-pong at Spin on East 23rd street.

If you want to save yourself the usual $200 to $250 NYC hotel room cost, this — a bedroom in a loft on Lafayette Street — is one alternative. Not too bad.

We all have to adjust to the oppressive and disgusting sweatbox atmosphere on NYC subway platforms during the summer, but here is it mid-September and yesterday the platforms still felt inferno-ish. The bottom line is that September and sometimes even early October are summer in Manhattan, and then you have nice fall weather for maybe four or five weeks, and then then it’s suddenly Siberia. NYC sweater weather is my one of the greatest things about this town, and there seems to be less and less of it each year.

On the soft-drink racks inside Etaly.

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