For what it’s worth I saw Woody Allen‘s Midnight in Paris again last night. (My first viewing was on 5.11 at the Cannes Film Festival.) I presumed it would play more or less the same, but to my surprise it gained. It’s a little bit cleaner and more carefully structured than I remembered. So I understand the popularity — it’s a very likable and highly satisfying film in a sort of easygoing, light-touch way.

The Westside Pavillion theatre I saw it in (#1) was completely filled. It’s weird to see movies projected at what looks to me like a 1.5 to 1 aspect ratio. Landmark definitely chops off the sides of the image; I’m just not sure to what degree.

“I don’t think it’s possible to discuss it without using the terms ‘thinking man’s fantasy film’ or ‘time-trip movie’ or ‘a down-the-rabbit-hole excursion’,” I wrote on 5.11, “so I’ll just say it’s Allen’s most charming and engaging film in this vein since The Purple Rose of Cairo…how’s that? And certainly his overall best since Match Point.”

Earlier today two photos of the recovering Rep. Gabrielle Giffords were posted on her Facebook page. They were taken almost four weeks ago, on 5.17 — roughly 21 weeks after she was shot point blank in the head during a Tuscon political gathering. She looks serene and mentally attuned (as far as visual impressions can convey this). She’s suffered a slight alteration in the appearance of her left eye, but otherwise it’s amazing that she looks so good.

I’d like to know how much she’s really recovered and what her actual prospects are, but that information isn’t likely to be divulged. All that’s been said so far is how remarkable and even startling her recovery has been.

How much better, I’m wondering, is she doing right now compared to former Ronald Reagan press secretary James Brady after he was shot in the head during the March 1981 attempt on Reagan’s life? What is a reasonable prognosis for her mental recovery? Where is she right now, and will she be able to regain 80% or 90% or even 95% of her former intellectual acuity? Less? To what extent are her language skills coming along and will she be able to work again in some capacity?

“At nearly three hours, The Big Country takes its time with each scene,” writes Tony Dayoub in a 6.8 posting on Nomad Editions Widescreen, an iPad publication. “But [it does so] with a deliberate purpose and payoff that can now be fully appreciated [on the Bluray version].

“Take my favorite scene, near the climax: The Major (Charles Bickford) has brought loyal foreman Leech (Charlton Heston) and his men to the narrow entry into Blanco Canyon, which separates his ranch from Hannassey’s. They’ve been lured there after Rufus Hannassey (Burl Ives) had ordered Julie Maragon (Jean Simmons) kidnapped.

“All of the Major’s men are aware it’s a trap, with the Hannasseys hiding behind the rocks that line the canyon, ready to shoot. But the Major is itching to settle his feud with Rufus, and is (over)confident that his men are up to the fight ahead. A chastened Leech has come around to believing McKay’s suggestion that the Major and Rufus’s feud will not end well for anybody. So Leech tries to talk the Major out of going into the canyon. But the Major calls him a coward, and after failing to enlist Leech’s men to follow, decides to go in alone.

“Quietly, Moross’ musical accompaniment starts as the Major marches into the canyon. A couple of shots later, in a beautiful setup that foregrounds the Major and places the entry into the canyon behind him near the horizon, we see a small solitary figure on horseback galloping toward the screen as the music begins to rise. It is Heston’s loyal Leech, deferentially sidling up to the Major as the music continues to rise.

“The same shot continues — this is all in one take — as another rider, and another, and then a whole group of them emerge from the same entryway into the canyon just as Leech did. They all slowly catch up to the Major and Leech as Moross’ rousing score hits its crescendo, the proud Major never once having turned back to look at his men. It’s an evocative sequence that captures the immensity of the setting and the characters that populate The Big Country.”

Could someone please explain why Act of Valor, a “very patriotic” Navy SEALS film costarring actors with zero name value (i.e., not even on an indie-cred Spirit Awards level), written by the author of 300 and directed by a couple of stuntmen (Scott Waugh and Mike “Mouse” McCoy, a.k.a. “the Bandito Brothers”) would be of any interest to discerning moviegoers like myself? Because it feels like a something made for machismo whores and mutton-brained righties and captive audiences on military bases.

Honestly? It sounds to me like a film that could be double-billed next year with The Expendables at Quentin Tarantino‘s New Beverly Cinema. Is it some kind of rah-rah recruitment thing? It’s in the can and was shot under the radar in Cambodia and the Mexico-Caribbean area with the backing of the military. The lead roles are played by actual Navy SEALS so it’s obviously about some kind of commando operation…big deal.

Deadline‘s Mike Fleming is reporting that Ryan Kavanaugh‘s Relativity Media will pay a $13 million minimum guarantee and a $30 million p & a commitment for this thing. It will open on 3000 screens, Fleming reports, on either Veteran’s Day weekend in November or on President’s Day weekend in February 2012.

It’s well and good that Super 8 will do $38 million this weekend, topping Phil Contrino’s boxoffice.com projection by $7 million. A B+ CinemaScore obviously indicates audience reservations to some degree, but let’s see what happens next weekend. The surprise, for me, is that X-Men: First Class dropped between 53% and 55% for a second-place showing of $25 million. I thought it would decline more in the range of 25% to 30%. I was under the distinct impression that word-of-mouth was somewhere between very good and excellent on Matthew Vaughn‘s film.

Two days ago Movieline (which goes to sleep on weekends) noted that Raiders of the Lost Ark opened exactly 30 years ago — on June 12, 1981. It cost $18 million to make and earned $384 million and change worldwide.

This, for me, was the movie that finally persuaded Hollywood that infantile Spielberg-Lucas fantasy-trip movies were the thing to invest in or at least try to imitate, and that dark/smart moody movies about narcotics detectives and oddball-rebel piano players and doomed extra-marital love affairs probably weren’t worth the trouble.

I remember muttering to myself after seeing Raiders the first time, “Very cool movie and a lot of fun, but things are going to be a lot of shallower from here on in…this may be the beginning of the end for depth and angularity and middlebrow introspection in mainstream Hollywood cinema.” Did Spielberg and Lucas cause this to happen? Did the Pied Piper of Hamelin not lead the children away from the village? Lucas-Spielberg showed Hollywood a way to make much more money from movies that were much thinner and more winky-wink popcorn with high-end production values and John Williams music, so in a way, yeah….they did.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

The second time I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark was at an all-media screening inside the ground-level theatre at Leows’ State at Broadway and 45th. When it was over and the lights came up and everyone was leaving I realized I was slowly walking behind John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, who at the time were shooting Neighbors. They were just shuffling along, not talking to each other, and nobody was paying any particular attention to them.

But I was two or three feet away from Belushi, and I did hear him suddenly say to no one in particular, “Yeaahhh.” I knew what he meant by that. He was saying, “I’ve worked with Spielberg and this is what he does, all right. I’m no genius but I’m kind of a subversive comedian….right? My schtick? And Steven, as good as he is, is probably one of the least subversive filmmakers around. Nobody can beat him at this kind of thing and this movie is going to make a boatload of money, and on some level…well, I’m not sure that I feel all that good about this because I’m not sure if I fit into Spielbergworld all that well….although I liked the money I made for doing 1941. But otherwise fuck me. I’m gonna be dead next year.”

Two days ago I scolded Deadline‘s Mike Fleming for not even mentioning the Phil Spector movie that Barry Levinson and Al Pacino had decided to make together (according to a 10.8.10 Brooks Barnes N.Y. Times story) in the midst of a 6.10 Levinson interview piece.

Well, it turns out that David Mamet, rightwing author of the Spector biopic screenplay, is going to direct, and not Levinson. Mamet confirmed this to Financial Times writer Jon Gapper in a piece that went up yesterday.

Mamet “is in New York with his producer to scout locations for a film he has written and will direct for HBO about Phil Spector, the legendary music producer,” Gapper writes.

“Spector, to be played by Al Pacino with Bette Midler as his lawyer, Linda Kenney Baden, was jailed for murder in 2008 after being convicted of the killing of Lana Clarkson, an actress, at his California mansion.

“I don’t think he’s guilty,” says Mamet. “I definitely think there is reasonable doubt. They should never have sent him away. Whether he did it or not, we’ll never know but if he’d just been a regular citizen, they never would have indicted him.”

I’m as appalled as the next lefty at Mamet’s conversion to arch-conservatism, but I agree with him on this last point. Spector was vigorously and relentlessly prosecuted because he was the arrogant Phil Spector of legend with the mansion and the bodyguards, etc.

I’ve watched trailers for Larry Crowne (Universal, 7.1) maybe seven or eight times now, and I feel as if I’ve absorbed most of what this Tom Hanks film has to offer. Is there more to the feature than what the trailers have shown? Of course. A whole lot more. Trailers only use the lowest-common-denominator stuff. Why, then, do I feel I’ve already gotten the gist and that the movie will just be longer? An unfair thing to say, I know.

“The movie is about combating cynicism,” Hanks has told W magazine’s Lynn Hirschberg. “People are naturally optimistic, but you have to choose to walk away from cynicism. You have to say, I am going to combat cynicism today. I had this idea about a unique guy who loses his job and then, at the end of the movie, realizes that it was the best thing that ever happened to him. He thought he was going to die, but it turned out great!”

I don’t believe that people over the age of 10 are “naturally optimistic”. Most people are open as far as it goes but naturally guarded, cautious — they’ll take what comes and see how it plays, depending on how perceptive, kind, trustworthy or insane the person they’re speaking to at a given moment seems to be. I myself lean toward “cynicism”, which I choose to characterize as seasoned, battle-hardened and wise to the way of things. But I’ve still come out of tough or grueling experiences or episodes realizing that I grew as a person or a writer because of them. On top of which I don’t entirely trust the optimistic philosophy of a gazillionaire — no offense, Tom.

Sanjeewa Pushpakumara‘s Flying Fish, a Sri Lankan civil war drama, has been praised by Indiewire contributor Meredith Brody for having “striking and assured compositions” with “astonishing saturated colors” and “more beautiful shots, I think, than in The Tree of Life.”

Brody caught Flying Fish at the 2011 Seattle Film Festival. It’s also been seen at the Rotterdam Film Festival, and is reportedly slated to play at the Museum of Modern Art’s Contemporary Asian Film series (July 7th through 13th) as well as the forthcoming 47th Chicago International Film Festival next October.

So why isn’t Flying Fish playing at the about-to-begin LA FilmFest? It sounds as if Pushpakumara’s film is at least worth seeing. Did LAFF programmers drop the ball?

Prior to the recent Seattle showing Pushpakumara “giggles through a somewhat off-putting introduction that prophesies numerous walkouts,” Brody writes, “since he did not make an enjoyable movie. It sounds like he’s daring us to endure it. Imagine my surprise when I do.

“The acting is rudimentary in three entwined stories of shocking sex and shocking violence set against the…endless Sri Lankan civil war.”

A 4.17.11 Sri Lanka Times story by Susitha R. Fernando says the following about Flying Fish:

“This daring, exciting story from northern Sri Lanka convincingly captures the madness in a land where the psychology of war is omnipresent. Three parallel stories deal with the attempts of ordinary village people to lead a normal life in abnormal circumstances.

“Through three parallel stories this daring debut deals with economic and even greater spiritual decay as the result of a civil war lasting more than two decades.

“A beautiful village girl falls in love with a soldier. Her father, 45-year-old Muthubanda, is against this. When his daughter falls pregnant, Muthubanda is harassed and humiliated by soldiers. He commits suicide and the girl flees the village. Her guilt and rage push her to do the least expected.

“A middle-aged widow takes care of her eight children in a village filled with tension between the army and the Tamil Tigers. She has an affair with a local and her son comes to know about it. His frustration drives him to something that will change all his siblings overnight.

“A thirteen-year-old Tamil girl lives in a village where the battle between the Tamil Tigers and the army is extremely intensive. Tamil forces are conducting active war propaganda in local schools. One night, they break into the girl’s house and demand a huge ransom for her. She chooses to escape.”

The recently released Big Country Bluray is a wow, all right. It looks like real film, and offers delightful razor-sharp detail and colors that pop vividly but not inorganically, etc. I’m told that the restoration cost somewhere in the low six figures, and it certainly looks like big money was spent. I saw a very clean print of this 1958 William Wyler film projected at the Academy theatre with ample light three or four years ago, and yet somehow the Bluray is more of a thrill.

The reason for the extraordinary detail and image quality, as noted three days ago, is that Wyler and dp Franz F. Planer shot with the 8-perf Technirama process, which used a larger frame area than 35mm (but was slightly smaller than 65mm).

The large-format source makes this a major Bluray to have and to hold, and yet serious Bluray-covering sites like High-Def Digest, DVD Talk and DVD Beaver still haven’t posted reviews because (a) copies aren’t being handed out free by publicists, (b) they have to be purchased from Walmart online, and (c) reviewers are cheap. (Bluray.com has posted a review.)

YouTube has warned me that posting the above clip, which I took right off my 50″ Vizio, might be outside their legal parameters. And yet they allow whole sections of the film to be posted and seen. (The same clip can be viewed by clicking on this link and going to the six-minute mark.)

The above scene is basically about the scrappy old-school authority demanded by ranch owner Henry Terrill (Charles Bickford) and a kind of moral rebellion staged by his top hand, Steve Leach (Charlton Heston). The look of disgust and resignation that Heston gives Bickford when he realizes that his moral mutiny has failed is one of Heston’s best-ever acting moments.

I felt suitably adrenalized while watching Fred Cavaye‘s Point Blank (Magnolia, 7.29), and moderately pleased while thinking about it later. Set in Paris, it’s a violent chase film about a hospital worker and his pregnant wife hurled into a high-pressure, do-or-die, move-it-or-lose-it situation. Cops, thieves, criminals, corruption, fists, guns, etc.

You’ve seen aspects of this before but the pacing feels just right. It’s fast and furious but not overly pushed or accelerated to the point of audience fatigue or numbness. And the dynamic — an innocent man pools forces with a lone-wolf criminal as they try to escape the wrath of numerous high-level baddies — feels relatively fresh or at least unhackneyed.

The French-langugage title is A Bout Portant.

It’s a little nutty here and there, but the action is more realistic — guys actually escape from their pursuers every so often, or at least manage to catch a breath from time to time. And the cutting is more ’70s-style (similar to the action beats in William Friedkin‘s The French Connection) than standard-issue U.S. crime thrillers, which have become way too fast and hyper for the most part, and have been all but ruined by the influence of the hyper-manic pacing and the oppressive Paul Greengrass shakycam aesthetic.

I’m especially angry at the idiotic and stifling notion in American crime thrillers that bad-guy pursuers must always be somewhere between a quarter-step and a half-step behind the pursued, and that get-aways can only happen at the very last millisecond and never before. It’s insane. Cavaye pulls back from this a bit.

Point Blank could use a little more breathing space and a bit more interplay between the regular-guy protagonist (Gilles Lellouche, playing a hospital orderly with a kidnapped pregnant wife) and the freelance desperado (Roschdy Zem) whom he teams up with out of necessity and desperation. But other than that this is an above-average thriller. There’s not a lot of residue when it’s over but these kind of films rarely linger. They’re just wham-bammers.

I remember a National Lampoon article summarizing the first term of Robert F. Kennedy‘s presidency. The point was that Kennedy would have become a moderately cautious liberal and boilerplate cold warrior, and a far cry from the “change” candidate that RFK ran as. Like someone else I could mention. Promise and potential are eternally attractive, but nobody’s a miracle worker. Reality will always compromise the dream.