Yesterday afternoon I drove out to Universal to watch a new DCP of Vertigo, which is the basis of the forthcoming Bluray. I’m not going to share my reactions until later, but it did leave me wondering if Vertigo really and truly deserves its #1 position in the 2012 Sight and Sound poll. Every time I see it it gets a little creakier, just a little bit harder to get lost in. I used to think this 1958 film was eerily haunting and slightly spooky and totally swimming in emotional obsession like few other films in history, but it’s getting old and the Eisenhower-era seams are showing.

Maybe it’s because I’ve seen Vertigo too many times, but more and more I’m noticing and getting stopped by the exasperating, flat-footed aspects. That expository dialogue in that early scene in Midge’s apartment. James Stewart‘s inability to be even slightly covert as he follows Kim Novak around San Francisco. That nonsensical moment when the landlady of the McKittrick Hotel says that Novak hasn’t been in the hotel, a lame tease on Hitchcock’s part. Novak’s pathetic line to Stewart in her hotel room: “Like me?” Novak’s stupidity in putting on the Carlotta necklace. The absurdity of a heavily shadowed nun scaring Novak enough to fall or leap put of the San Juan Batista bell tower. I’m sorry but all these things were vaguely irritating me and then some.

Hollywood Elsewhere’s 45 or 46 Greatest Films of All Time: The Godfather Part II, Raging Bull, High Noon, Zodiac, Strangers on a Train, Barry Lyndon (except for the dead zone portion in Act Three), L’Avventura, Citizen Kane, The Social Network, North by Northwest, The Godfather, Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove, Shane, Sexy Beast, Taxi Driver, Some Like It Hot, Children of Men, On The Waterfront, The Wizard Of Oz, The Limey, the Sopranos epic, The Train, Goodfellas, On The Waterfront, Sunset Boulevard, The American Friend, Psycho, Blow Up, Prince of The City, Full Metal Jacket, L’eclisse, United 93, Vertigo, Deliverance, The Hit, Purple Rose of Cairo, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Only Angels Have Wings, Lolita, Bloody Kids, Amores perros.

This is how I spent roughly 16 minutes yesterday afternoon. My Twitter comment: “WeHo post-office agony. Two people won’t stop chatting at counter with postal workers. Line of people standing like statues. In a coma.”

Apart from noting that four costars in Terrence Malick‘s To The Wonder — Rachel Weisz, Barry Pepper, Michael Sheen and Amanda Peet — have been cut out of the final version, Deadline‘s Nancy Tartaglione is reporting from the Venice Film Festival that the film, due to screen on Sunday, “more closely resembles Badlands rather than, say, Tree of Life.”

This, at least, is what Tartaglione “understand[s]” from having spoken to some buyer or distributor or tipster of some kind.

If To The Wonder was some kind of substantive cousin of Badlands, which some contend is Malick’s best film ever, some kind of buzz to this effect would have surely seeped through by now. I’m not going to say any more except that I’m highly suspicious of this analogy.

What I don’t understand is why the headline for Tartaglione’s story states that “Terrence Malick Leaves Venice.” The story makes no mention of Malick having arrived in Venice in either a literal or metaphorical sense, and certainly no mention of his having left it.

I’ve spoken of this sequence before but I couldn’t find the right clip until this morning,. This is Charlotte Rampling‘s most searing moment. Half of the power of this sequence is in the cutting, of course, but it’s nonetheless one of the most emotionally naked exposures any actress has offered in any mainstream film.

My second reaction risks sounding insensitive or brutish, but it’s true: this is the kind of woman who tends to be mostly problematic if not impossible in a working-it-through, day-to-day relationship sense, but is breathtaking in bed. I’m sorry but this is what my life experience has taught me. Moderate, emotionally healthy, well-rounded women are surely better, more dependable partners, but they tend to be less mad and less perverse in an erotic sense.

Andrew Sullivan: I was only wrong in sensing that the Republican party might just have the good grace and patriotism to cooperate with an incoming president…in the worst recession since the 1930s. I’m sorry, but they set out to destroy this guy from the get-go. Of all the countries in the world…we’ve done better [in recovering from the ’08 meltdown] than any western country over the last three years.”

Current‘s David Shuster tweeted yesterday afternnoon that “GOP attendee [has been] ejected for throwing nuts at African American CNN camerawoman + saying ‘This is how we feed animals.'” Convention organizers actually said that two GOP-ers were ejected for same.

A convention spokesperson responded as follows: “We regret to say that our electoral base is partly compromised of racist assholes, but what do you want us to say or do? We need to be cool or at least at par with these jerks in order to get elected and stay in office.” Kidding!

Convention organizers in fact said that “two attendees tonight exhibited deplorable behavior. Their conduct was inexcusable and unacceptable. This kind of behavior will not be tolerated.”

CNN’s statement: “CNN can confirm there was an incident directed at an employee inside the Tampa Bay Times Forum earlier this afternoon. CNN worked with convention officials to address this matter and will have no further comment.”

How did Governor Fat Fattie do tonight? Like others I like his feistiness, directness, New Jerseyness. He connects more than Romney — that’s for sure. But I didn’t get much of a launch feeling from his speech, certainly not on the level of Barack Obama‘s 2004 speech in Boston. Not a word about the ruinous acts of the Bush administration. Not a word about the obstructionist, hell-bent, loony-tune Congress.

There is well-fed, portly, bulky, fat, grotesquely overweight and Jabba the Hut obese. Gov. Christie is somewhere between the last two. Did you catch his profile? The man is clearly out of control — much bigger than Jackie Gleason‘s Ralph Kramden — and a couple of his kids are lardos besides.

But he hasn’t fulfilled my ’08 dreams. I want my dreams to come true. And it’s not my responsibility to make that happen, by the way. That’s his job. Don’t look at me. I’ve got enough aggravation.

Ben Lewin‘s The Sessions (Fox Searchlight, 10.26) “is a touching, thoughtful and comforting film about touching, needing, being open and the finding of fulfillment,” I wrote on 1.24.12. “It’s an emotionally erotic variation on the themes in My Left Foot, The Sea Inside and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly with a little dash of Who’s Life Is It Anyway?. John Hawkes will almost certainly get some awards action eight to ten months hence; ditto Helen Hunt.”

“The only thing the film (i.e., Lewin) lacks is a strong visual imagination. Any film about a paralyzed protagonist needs to somehow free itself from that immobility. It can’t just be a series of static interiors or the viewer will start to be hemmed in to some degree.”

Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon‘s The Central Park Five will play Toronto and may — I say “may” — turn up in Telluride. Obviously another miscarriage-of-justice doc, etc. The trailer shows nothing but almost complete blackness for the first minute or so — ballsy or boring? There’s a pre-Toronto screening happening in Manhattan later this week but not, apparently, in Los Angeles.

“In 1989, five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem were arrested and later convicted of brutally beating and raping a white woman in New York City’s Central Park. New York Mayor Ed Koch called it the ‘crime of the century’ and it remains to date one of the biggest media stories of our time. The five each spent between 6 and 13 years in prison before a shocking confession from a serial rapist and DNA evidence proved their innocence.”

“The enormity of their flat brain, the enormity of their stupidity, is just overwhelming. Try to look [at one] in the eye with great intensity, and the intensity of stupidity that is looking back at you is just amazing.” This is Werner Herzog talking about chickens in a clip directed by Siri Bunford. I naturally associated the quote with various biped encounters I’ve had over the years in…aahh, let’s say sports bars.

This Nathaniel Hawthorne/”Scarlet Letter” Miracle Whip ad is about four months old, but it’s been playing on MSNBC the last couple of days. Farcical acting, of course, but handsome visual values, atmospherically sophisticated — as nicely done as Ridley Scott‘s The Duellists. Cheers to mcgarrybowen of Chicago, chief creative officer Ned Crowley, Park Pictures and director Joachim Back.