Congratulations to Kent Jones and Robert Koehler for being hired as dual replacements for outgoing Film Society of Lincoln Center senior programming hotshot Richard Pena. 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.

It’s been recently claimed by Nick Wrigley on Home Theatre Forum that James Stewart‘s brown suit in Vertigo is not really brown but aubergine, which is a kind of blending of brown with a little red or violet thrown in. To my knowledge nobody has ever made such a claim since Vertigo‘s release 54 years ago, but nothing is too weird when you get into the world of Bluray film dweebs and their anal-tech obsessions.

“Looking at the UK Blu-ray of Vertigo, Jimmy’s supposedly ‘brown’ suit is mostly a dark aubergine. Sometimes it looks brownish, but mostly it looks aubergine. My friend commented ‘you just can’t get suits that colour these days…look at it, it’s gorgeous.’ Is there a chance it was a beautiful aubergine suit on the VistaVision negative, but optically reduced 35mm dye transfer prints made it ‘brown’? Or am I barking up the wrong aubergine?”

I wrote yesterday that in a curiously colored Vertigo DCP I was shown in late August Stewart’s brown suit has morphed into a kind of violet-brown or purplish brown.

I only know that Stewart’s Scottie Ferguson has been wearing the same diarrhea-brown suit in countless viewings of Vertigo and now suddenly there’s a new aubergine meme working its way into the conversation? If it’s been aubergine all along why didn’t someone make that claim years or decades ago?

Even if Stewart’s suit was very subliminally aubergine on some level on the Vertigo set, the suit color in the Vertigo DCP that I saw on 8.28 is significantly more violet-shaded than in any Vertigo image I’ve ever seen. Talk about a whiter shade of pale — this is a purple shade of brown.

I know what Stewart’s suit looked like in Robert Harris and Jim Katz‘s 1996 70mm restored version of Vertigo, and in all those stills I’ve seen over the years and it was always plain earth brown…period. No redness, no purple or violet tones, none of that.

I’m asking now for all members of the Secret Vertigo Aubergine Society (i.e., those who’ve always secretly believed that Stewart’s suit was aubergine but didn’t want to say anything for whatever perverse reason) to come out now and declare themselves. I know this sounds ridiculous, but I’m rather infuriated about this. I intend to stop this aubergine thing in its tracks right now if I can. I will not give up and say, “Oh, gee, I guess I’m color-blind now and have been color-blind all along…just call me an aubergine convert now that Nick Wrigley has opened my eyes!”

How many people use the word aubergine in common conversation, much less know what it means?

It’s always been brown, brown, brown all the way, believe me. Don’t listen to these guys. The aubergine thing is absurd.

In a 9.13 post, Charles Pierce‘s Politics Blog has revealed that Esquire and Yahoo! News asked national pollster Gary Langer to survey more than a thousand Americans following the two political conventions. The complete survey will be available in early October in Esquire’s November issue, but here are some basic numbers. 58% of those surveyed believe that Obama would take Romney in a fist fight.

I’m about to slip into the 12 noon press-and-industry screening of Brian DePalma‘s Passion, which got killed in Venice and hasn’t done any better here (“a campy, uninintentonally hilarious romp“). Then comes Nick Cassevetes‘ Yellow at 3 pm. And finally a revisiting of Rodney Ascher‘s Room 237, a doc about several imaginative and /or obsessive interpretations of Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining, which I first saw eight months ago at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

There have been several films about drunks (The Lost Weekend, Leaving Las Vegas, Under The Volcano, etc.) but only two, really, about a couple coping with alcoholism with one choosing sobriety and the other resisting or unable to follow — Blake Edwards‘ Days of Wine and Roses and now James Ponsoldt‘s Smashed (Sony Classics, 10.12), which I missed at Sundance but finally saw last night.

Aaron Paul, Mary Elizabeth Winstead in James Ponsoldt’s Smashed.

I liked it, wasn’t bored, stayed with it, admired it and came out saying to myself and anyone who asked, “Yeah, definitely…a straight story foritifed by solid writing, strong directing and really fine performances,” especially from Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Breaking Bad‘s Aaron Paul. It’s all about character, choices and consequence within realistic restrictions, and these two bring honesty and clarity to the table.

The only problem I had with their on-screen marriage is that Winstead is tallish (about 5’8″) and Paul seems at least a bit shorter. This may be an illusion, but with the giselle-like, open-hearted Winstead around it’s hard to invest in a runty T-shirted guy with a tennis-ball haircut and patchy facial growth playing a party animal…no offense. (I have a thing about tennis-ball haircuts, which I feel are good for one environment and one movie only — the Devil’s Island prison colony in Franklin J. Schaffner‘s Papillon.) I’m not faulting Paul’s performance in the least. He just bothers me.

Special cheers and commendations to director and cowriter James Ponsoldt for keeping things pruned and focused and making every scene seem necessary. The screenplay was co-written by Susan Burke, a recovering alcoholic who faced her issues in her late teens and early 20s, and so the film seems to know whereof it speaks. Speaking as a currently sober guy and the son of an alcoholic it passes the smell test and then some. Smashed deserves all the respect, admiration, ticket sales, downloads and Spirit Awards that the world can offer or part with.

With the exception of one “oh, come on!” moment, Smashed walks right in, sits right down and tells the truth about alcoholism in a way that feels like tight drama and a serious roll-on or roll-in. I would only add that as cleansing and righteous as telling the raw truth can feel, never confess your alcoholic sins to an employer…ever. Employers don’t want to know about your personal stuff so don’t even think about going there. Employers are not your friends. They are people to be served and satisfied and respected as far as it goes, but they always need to be played.

Do 20- and 30-somethings have alcohol issues that compare to the ones that 40-and-overs have? Probably, but I sure as hell never paid attention to whatever issues I might have had in my 20s and 30s. I just sipped and chugged and “ho-hoh”-ed along and didn’t give it a second thought. Then I was stopped by some very bad omens in the ’90s and that was the end of my vodka-and-lemonade-ing. And then it hit me that wine and beer had become a bit of a drag and they got the heave-ho last March.

I was indifferent to Winstead in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (a movie that I did everything in my power to wound if not kill) and I barely remember her from Death Proof, but she settles in, plants her feet and delivers the plain goods here. Her performance is more in the realm of seriously rooted and convincing than drop-dead, Oscar-assured wowser, but she’s obviously upped her game. If Winstead is smart she’ll never go back to being a geek pixie-fantasy girl. Well, she can, but it’ll be a comedown now that she’s achieved a kind of career peak.

Cheers also to costars Nick Offerman, Octavia Spencer, Mary Kay Place and Megan Mullally (whose reaction to Winstead’s honesty in an end-of-act-two scene is the basis of my “oh, come on!” reaction).

I also quite liked that Smashed runs only 80 minutes., and yet it doesn’t feel in the least bit truncated or abbreviated. It actually has a sense of story-telling discipline….imagine!

Incidentally: It was mentioned last night that Glenn Gordon Caron‘s Clean and Sober (’88) is also a coping-with-addiction drama involving a romantically-lined couple, but that was about cocaine and largely about rehab.

Archaeologists announced Wednesday that the remains of Richard III may have been unearthed in the shadow of the University of Leicester. The hump-backed monarch is believed to have been buried in Leicester after his defeat in the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. The bones unearthed during the dig have been sent for DNA testing and experts believe the skeleton is “a very strong candidate” to be genuine. This at least allows for a posting of Laurence Olivier‘s “now is the winter of our discontent” speech.

I’m supposed to see James Ponsoldt‘s Smashed at 6 pm at the Ryerson, and then attend a dinner for talent. Pic is about an elementary-school teacher who realizes she needs to get control and sober up. Word around town is that Mary Elizabeth Winstead gives a stand-out, possibly award-worthy performance. Speaking as an ex-wine and vodka drinker who’s currently sober, there’s something in me that doesn’t want to see this. Is it because alcoholics are incredibly dull people to hang with?

The above comment refers to Terrence Malick‘s To The Wonder. It was passed along to Hollywood Reporter awards-season columnist Scott Feinberg in a piece posted on 9.12.

There’s one good thing about being Phillip Seymour Hoffman, apart from his talent and wealth and bright future. He’s only 45 but he looks at least 65 — white-haired, bearish, bearded, bespectacled. Which means that he can’t age any more because he’s already succumbed to most of the things that happen to people when they get into their final third. In other words he’s like Max Von Sydow, who looks roughly the same now as he did almost 40 years ago in The Exorcist.

One of the things that bothered me about Juan Antonio Bayona‘s The Impossible is that right in the middle of being carried along by tsunami currents and trying to stay afloat and not be gored or gashed, Naomi Watts is shown crying and moaning. Ditto her kids. That is not what people do when they’re struggling to stay alive.

People in serious trouble are like animals — their eyes are wide open, fierce and glaring, and their mind is always focused entirely on what to do and not to do that might avoid or prevent death, and that’s all. The weeping and all that other crap comes later, after it’s over and the person can take a breath. Watt’s moaning and wailing is entirely about “acting” — she and Bayona want the less intelligent people in the audience to understand that things are really tough and scary for her at this moment.

If anything, a person who’s succeeding at staying afloat and not drowning is likely to experience a certain exhilaration. Your’e not going to laugh or go “whoopee!”,” but it would feel awfully damn good to not be overcome by the currents and to keep your nose above water, etc. Remember that Winston Chrurchill quote about how “there is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result”? Same principle.

A lot of people have been giving me goo-goo eyes up here because they think I’m Chris Walken, who costars in Martin McDonagh‘s Seven Psychopaths, a TIFF entry. Two guys have asked me for autographs. Women’s expressions have been like “well, whoa-ho! Wanna talk?” Except I’m younger and a bit smoother looking than Walken. Walken is craggier and saggier looking with significant gray hair. And he has crinkly eye bags and a neck waddle and a pot belly that I don’t have. And I can’t imitate him for shit.

After the Vertigo-screening debacle at last April’s TCM Classic Movies Festival, Universal admitted error and invited me to come see a corrected version when ready. I finally saw it on the lot late last month. Thanks to Universal for this courtesy, but I’m sorry to say that Alfred Hitchcock‘s 1958 classic still doesn’t look right. I’ve heard there’s an issue or two with other titles in Uni’s forthcoming Hitchcock Masterpiece Bluray Collection (9.25), so this seems like the right time to air reactions.

The Vertigo I saw on 8.28 — a DCP that represents the new forthcoming Bluray — is crisp and detailed and certainly more lustrous and colorful than the version shown last April.

But the color has been over-cranked and over-saturated to the extent that it looks like a mistake. It’s incorrect and untrue by way of looking far too intense, and definitely too red, and not just in those intense red wallpaper scenes in Ernie’s.

The woman’s face in the opening credits before the camera goes in on her eye is supposed to be nearly black and white with a just a faint touch of sepia. (The above YouTube clip is a good representation of how it should look.) And they got it wrong again — the tint is definitely too orange.

Jimmy Stewart‘s brown suit is brownish violet or brownish purple (I can’t decide what to call it) throughout the first half or so. But it’s supposed to be plain brown. We all know what brown looks like. Brown is brown. It doesn’t have a violet tint.

Stewart wore pancake make up and eyeliner during filming — all actors did in the ’50s and the general big-studio era — but the over-saturated color scheme makes his face look like a mixture of Monument Valley sand and orange and creme biege makeup base.

And Stewart’s blue suit worn during the San Juan Batista inquest scene is ludicrous. It’s blinding, it’s luminescent — like something out of Tim Burton‘s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Almost all the men in the inquest scene, in fact, are wearing vivid blue suits. I’ve seen the color done correctly in the 70mm restored version, and they’re all basically wearing black, dark blue and gray suits — NOT crazy electric LSD blue.

Bottom line: it’s still effed up in the sense that the color isn’t accurate or life-like, but it looks better than the disastrous version shown last April. I guess the color will be adjustable, as always, when it comes out on Bluray. But if what I saw on the Universal lot is in fact what the forthcoming Bluray will look like, then the people who mastered the DCP have once again degraded the film. They should have used the 1996 Robert Harris-Jim Katz restored version and just digitized it and cleaned it up.

This is a plain, honest representation of James Stewart’s brown suit in Vertigo. Verily I say unto thee that this color was nowhere to be found in the Vertigo DCP I saw in late August. In this new digital version Stewart wears what must be described as a mauve-brown or violet-brown suit.

Summary: Why did Universal’s Peter Schade and Mike Daruty decide to finalize a DCP of Vertigo that cranks and intensifies the colors to such a strong degree? Why did they sign off on a credit sequence that delivers an orange-tint to the woman’s face instead of the correct black-and-white with just a touch of sepia? Why is Stewart’s brown suit brownish violet or brownish purple? Why are Stewart and those other guys wearing suits during the inquest hearing that are madly, wildly, psychedelically blue?

More to the point, what persuaded Schade and Daruty to believe they could get a better looking, more vivid representation of Vertigo by going back to the negative and ignoring the Robert Harris-Jim Katz restoration of Vertigo, which represented 18 months of painstaking work? They presumably felt they could achieve better results by bypassing the 1996 photo-chemical restoration and re-do it digitally, but it’s abundantly clear that the colors looked right in ’96 but look wrong in the current DCP version.

A 70mm print of the Harris-Katz Vertigo is showing at the American Cinematheque on Saturday, 9.29.