That Digital Bits announcement about Columbia Tristar Home Video deciding to release an Ishtar DVD on 10.19 is incorrect, I was told this morning. It’s actually coming out sometime in the first quarter of 2011. Whatever the facts, I’m happy to assume that various HE articles pushing for this may have had a minor impact. (The first, posted on 1.8.10, was called “Free Ishtar!“). I’ll allow that New Yorker‘s Richard Brody may have also influenced, although he didn’t speak up until early this month.

Now I have to go out and pay money to see Piranha 3D? I know I’ll hate it but it’s apparently the new Human Centipede so there’s no ducking out. “An imitation of B-movie beach schlock and John Waters” with “visual humor that lacks wit or nerve,” in the words of Wesley Morris? Or “hands down and body parts floating, the most irresistibly sick movie in years,” in the view of Tampa Bay’s Steve Persall?

It’s managed an 81/60 hoi-polloi vs. elite divide on Rotten Tomatoes. Any film with Eloi Roth in a supporting role has to be at least a bit repellent.

Last Friday The Digital Bits announced that Warner Home Video is currently preparing Bluray editions of Stanley Kubrick‘s Lolita and Barry Lyndon, for release in 2011. Their WHV source also “hinted” that the films are going to be available both as singles and as part of a new Stanley Kubrick Blu-ray Collection.

Essential buys, of course, but I wonder how much of a big Bluray bonanza Barry Lyndon is likely to be. It’ll look better than the DVD, of course, but to what extent? There’s no overpraising John Alcott‘s cinematography, but how much better can a slightly grainy 35mm film that mainly relied on natural light and is distinguished mainly for its framings (i.e., simulating the look of 18th Century landscapes) look on Bluray? I’m asking. I think the better Bluray high will come from Lolita, a monochrome jewel with lush silvery tones and velvety blacks and…I don’t know how to put it but there’s always been something vaguely sensual and Bijou-ish about the textures.

Cenk Uygur‘s rant about Fox News’ constant servings of non-journalistic propaganda is fairly boilerplate. Uygur delivered this last Friday, the final day of his guest-hosting stint on MSNBC’s Ed Show. And it’s obvious how MSNBC producers have made him into a slightly different guy. He’s been told, like all mainstream TV journos, to talk faster, keep it peppy and wear slick powerball suits with vivid ties. I prefer Cenk’s slightly slower, more natural-sounding patter on The Young Turks, and with the collar unbuttoned.

The pronunciation of his name, I finally figured out, is “Jenk Yoo-gerr.”

I failed yesterday to acknowledge the box-office triumph of The Expendables, particularly its overtaking the initial lead of Vampires Suck on Saturday to claim the weekend crown with an estimated $16.5 million at 3,270 locations for a $5045 per-screen average. And to note that Eat Pray Love only dropped 48% for the weekend (as opposed to the Friday-to-Friday drop of 57%) for $12 million and a third-place showing.

Nobody seems to care very much about Lottery Ticket, The Other Guys, Nanny McPhee, etc. Who am I to argue?

I could argue that the failure of The Switch to make more than $8.3 million at 2010 locations ($4125 per screen average) betokens or foretells the gradual collapsing of the Jennifer Aniston brand…or I could just let it go. I’m glad that Bill Simmons didn’t. His 8.20 piece on Aniston (“Why she can’t find a man” and “Why her film career is what it is”) is the best piece of analysis I’ve read about any actor’s’ career in a long time. L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein more or less agreed the same day.

Aniston “hasn’t faded into B- and C-list obscurity because of the Angelina/Brad/Jennifer love triangle,” Simmons wrote. “[It is] like Brett Favre‘s comeback/retirement/comeback routine multiplied by 10, but has been cruising along for twice as long. She lost her scummy husband to a seductive co-worker. Maybe it was the worst thing that ever happened to her personally, but professionally? Godsend. She became America’s adorable little victim for seven years until Sandra Bullock finally pushed her aside.”

Scott Feinberg‘s pre-festival Oscar nominee projection slate is pretty good stuff. I have my disputes, of course. The Social Network is my idea of muscular (again, based on a reading of the script) and, going by Scott Foundas and Peter Travers raves, right up there with Inception, The Kids Are All Right and Toy Story 3. (Even if the latter’s nomination will be meaningless.) But what makes Danny Boyle‘s 127 Hours, a movie about a spiritual arm-carving, a frontrunner? Because of the Boyle brand?

A friend who knows the game insists that Mike Leigh‘s Another Year is not a Best Picture frontrunner — he says it’s going to open, be well reviewed and then “go away.” Feinberg thinks Ed Zwick‘s Love and Other Drugs is a Best Picture frontrunner. But we all know that Zwick’s track record argues against this. (The only clear signal I’m getting is that LAOD‘s Anne Hathaway is a Best Actress nominee.) If The Tree of Life in fact opens and is half as good as it’s rumored to be, it’ll be a frontrunner, not a possibility. In a right world Get Low would be at least a major threat. And how does Feinberg rate Julian Schnabel’s Miral and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Biutiful as mere possibilities?

I couldn’t react to Anne Thompson‘s 8.19 report about Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life opening later this year after all. Which posted a day or so after Todd McCarthy predicted it wouldn’t be seen until next May’s Cannes Film Festival. After reading McCarthy’s piece I asked a super-connected guy and he said “no decision” had been made. A day or so later Thompson reported her version. Is anyone else sick of this?

I had lunch with the great Ray Bradbury on the Disney lot in ’84, a week or two before the debut of Something Wicked This Way Comes. (The chat was facilitated by veteran Disney publicist Howard Green.) I especially recall Bradbury talking about how writing was pure joy to him, and how banging out three or four pages was always the high point of his day.

“Pure joy?,” I remember saying to myself. “In what parallel universe?” Doing HE is actually fun most of the time, and when it isn’t it’s not too difficult. But in the bad old typewriter days I equated writing with digging ditches. “I don’t care how successful Bradbury is,” I muttered. “Is he taking…what, happiness pills? Writing is pain. He’s just spewing.”

In his review of a new British Bluray of Jack Clayton‘s The Innocents, DVD Beaver’s Gary W. Tooze ignores a significant visual element. The 1961 film was clearly shot with older Fox CinemaScope lenses, and therefore suffered from the “CinemaScope mumps,” a syndrome that mostly manifested in CinemaScope films of the ’50s in which actor’s faces (and everything else) looked a tad wider than in actual life.

Deborah Kerr, Pamela Franklin (who’s now 60 years old) in Jack Clayton’s The Innocents.

The “mumps” began to gradually disappear around ’59 or ’60 when then-new widescreen Panavision lenses, which didn’t produce wider-than-normal images, were put into use. But Fox’s British unit was apparently using older-style CinemaScope lenses.

I hate the “mumps” syndrome. It makes me grind my teeth. DVD Talk’s Glenn Erickson noticed it in his 2005 review of an Innocents, to wit: “The only hindrance is that the lenses used appear to be older models that give faces the CinemaScope ‘mumps’ in close-ups. These earlier lenses with distorted fields show up frequently in Fox films made in Europe.”

Millions of moviegoers watched widescreen “mumps” films in the ’50s and early ’60s and didn’t notice or say anything, of course. It’s my cross to bear that I do notice this stuff (like the 1.85 masking of On The Waterfront the other night, which the entire audience was apparently cool with) and being the only guy who goes up to complain, or who writes about it.

Toooze also says, by the way, that “this dual-layered 1080P transfer from the BFI does indeed improve especially in the visibility of grain…[it] is far easier to see, providing some earthy texture to the visuals.” I understand how detail and grain sometimes go hand in hand with older films, but how does a film improve by “the visibility of grain”? Forget it. I don’t want to know.

Until last night I’d never seen footage of Frank Zappa‘s 3.27.63 visit to the Steve Allen Show to demonstrate how bicycles can be used as musical instruments. It’s a four-parter — here’s part 1, part 3 and part 4. Zappa was 23 at the time of taping. A year later he formed a band that gradually became the Mothers of Invention.

The only Mothers song I ever really listened to was “Dirty Love.” A band that I played drums with briefly adopted Dog Breath, a Zappa term, as a name. (At the time it was a fairly obscure composition.)

Graham King‘s GK Films seems to be in fairly good shape with Ben Affleck‘s The Town (playing Venice and Toronto festivals, opening on 9.17) and Florian von Henckel Donnersmarck‘s The Tourist (recently advanced to 12.10.10 opening, always a good sign). But it appears that something’s wrong with William Monahan‘s London Boulevard, a GK-funded crime drama which finished principal in August ’09 and has long been presumed/rumored to be a fall 2010 release. That seems unlikely at this stage.

London Boulevard costars Colin Farrell, Keira Knightley during shooting. Stills from William Monahan’s film are so sparse that I’ve no choice but to use half-ass candids.

My guess is that Monahan’s superb screenwriting talent hasn’t fully translated over to directing, and that his inexperience combined with anal tendencies caused problems on the set (or so says a London source), and that reactions to the unfinished film were such that extra shooting was deemed necesssary (ditto), and that King has decided to pull the plug on a fall awards-campaign release and punt instead for 2011. Again, some reporting but I’m mainly guessing.

LB is a London-based crime drama about an ex-con named Mitchell (Colin Farrell), just out of the slammer, who falls in love with Charlotte (Keira Knightley), an actress who’s fallen into a odd kind of career slumber, while running afoul of some gangster guys (Eddie Marsan or Ray Winstone or both). Costars include David Thewlis, Anna Friel, Ophelia Lovibond, Ben Chaplin, Sanjeev Baskhar and Jamie Campbell Bower.

Lovibond told me a few weeks ago that she expects (i.e.. had been told ) that Monahan’s film would get a U.S. release in November. On top of which the IMDB (hardly an authority, I realize) has posted a U.K. release date of 10.15. But I’m seeing indications that London Boulevard isn’t going to open this year due to GK deciding it’s not an award-season contender. This would mean a 2011 release, possibly in the early months or the late summer/early fall.

Not that I’m hoping for such a scenario. I’d love to be wrong. I’m a fan of Monahan’s script — a delightful read — and I’ve been rooting big-time for London Boulevard to turn up at the Toronto Film Festival, etc. It doesn’t look that way now, but if Lovibond’s forecast turns out to be correct, great.

London Boulevard‘s Colin Farrell (r.) and some crew guys, taken during filming.

“They did some extra shooting in London between two and three months ago,” my London guy says. “They also did very brief additional shooting in L.A. with, I believe, a stand-in for Keira Knightley. You’ve read the script so you know that it’s a back shot of KK’s character standing, if I remember correctly, of the balcony of the Chateau Marmont.

“I did hear there were a lot of problems during the shoot and that Monahan” — Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Departed, but a total first-time director — “was beyond paranoid, involving himself in every single aspect of filming, which, of course, meant that shooting took forever.”

No announcement on a U.S. distribution deal means it’s been seen (GK apparently showed whatever he had to buyers in Cannes last May) and there are doubts, or that no one’s seen a finished cut at all — i.e., Monahan being anal and obsessive and slow to pull it together, like he allegedly was during filming.

The usual strategy in a limbo situation of this sort would be for GK to take London Boulevard to Telluride, Venice and Toronto, but to my knowledge there’s nothing doing on that score as far as Venice and Toronto are concerned. (Telluride slates are never announced until the last minute.)

I read Monahan’s script a couple of months ago and recognized right away it’s a sturdy, character-based, unhurried crime drama mixed with romance and hints of dark poetry. Well-sculpted dialogue, sprinklings of echo and nuance and melancholy, a little touch of Mona Lisa in the night. Which is precisely the kind of film that could benefit from dog-and-pony shows at the early September festivals.

The only approved still I’ve been able to find.

And where’s the trailer, at least? Boulevard wrapped a year ago, was being shopped in Cannes last May, and is supposedly coming out on 10.15 in England — seven weeks from now — and there’s still no trailer? And no London Boulevard website? You can’t even find decent stills online…c’mon.

Monahan’s script is based on Ken Bruen’s 2001 novel. Mitchell’s romantic interest in Bruen’s book is a 60 year-old reclusive actress named Lillian Palmer, so Monahan has definitely shuffled that element around. Knightley is, what, 25 or 26?

Bruen’s book was described in a book-review synopsis as a “gritty reimagining of Billy Wilder‘s Sunset Boulevard, transplanting the action from glitzy Hollywood to the rough and tumble London streets…looking for an honest job, Mitchell finds work as a handyman for Palmer, who lives in a sprawling estate with her taciturn butler, Jordan.”

Thewlis is playing Jordan in the film, and Friel is playing Briony, who is Palmer’s sister in the book but Farrell’s in the film.

E-mails to Maxine Leonard, GK Films‘ senior vp marketing and publicity, and Joy Fehily of Prime Public relations, were unanswered when I posted this morning. I also asked a couple of film festival guys who always know stuff, but they didn’t respond either.

Criterion Guy #1: Okay, everyone’s here? As you may have heard, Criterion is coming out with a DVD/Bluray disc with several very cool movies next fall. All made in the late ’60s or early ’70s by the celebrated Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson and some other guy…what’s the name again?

Criterion Guy #2: Steve Blauner.

Criteron Guy #1: Who?

Criterion Guy #2: Steve Blauner.

Criterion Guy #1: Browner?

Criterion Guy #2: Blauner. B-L-A-U-N-E-R.

Criterion Guy #1: Blauner, fine. And the idea is to try and market it — now listen to me carefully — we want to market it so as to diminish interest in anyone buying or renting this thing except for film nerd types like…whomever, Gavin Smith, that type of customer. And to even make it hard on them. Okay? I want ideas. How do we do this?

Criterion Guy #3: Question?

Criterion Guy #1: Shoot.

Criterion Guy #3: Why do we not want people to buy this? I’m not…

Criterion Guy #1: Because we’re Criterion…hello? You work here and you’re asking me that?

Criterion guy #4: How about calling the package, I don’t know….call it 40 Year-Old Hollywood Coolness. You know, something that’ll turn off the under-35 customers? By making it seem like a boomers-only thing?

Criterion Guy #1: Yeah, but then we’d get boomer-aged buyers. I want an idea that will turn off everyone. Or at least a title that will mean nothing and do nothing to spur sales with any quadrant. C’mon, people…think.

Criterion Guy #5: I got it.

Criterion Guy #1: Yeah?

Criterion guy #5: Let’s call it America Lost and Found: The BBS Story. It sounds partly like some milk-carton lost children thing, and partly like an obscure code for…I don’t know, some British TV station in Manchester or whatever. The point is that it’s extremely fucking obscure-sounding. Like, ridiculous obscure.

Criterion Guy #3: You’re saying people won’t be able to figure out what BBS stands for? It’s right there on the back of the package

Criterion Guy #5: Presumably, yeah, sure. They’ll figure it out. But nobody wants to figure anything out — that’s my point. Any marketing course will tell you people don’t want to consider or ponder anything. They just want to get it fast…snap! Even if they figure out that BBS doesn’t stand for three last names but three first names, which is weird as it is, they’ll never, ever in a million fucking years figure out that the “S” stands for Steve.

Criterion Guy #4: Steve Browner?

Criterion Guy #3: Blauner.

Criterion #1: I think you’re on to something.