A three-minute informercial about Chris Nolan‘s Oppenheimer (Universal, 7.21) and especially about the technical grandeur of 70mm IMAX, addressing the technical immersives and whatnot, and they can’t specifically state which aspect ratio Oppenheimer will be shown in — the preferred 1.43:1 or the less preferred 1.78:1 or 1.90:1?

Hardcore 70mm IMAX has to be projected at 1.43:1…period. 1.43 is taller than fuck, and not that far away from classic “HE boxy” (i.e., 1.37 or 1.33). Trust me — it’s the only way to go.

1.78:1 or 1.90:1, which is how a significant portion of Nolan’s Dunkirk was presented, doesn’t get it.

How much of Dunkirk was presented within 1.43? Wikipage: “The film [used] both IMAX 65 mm and 65 mm large format film stock in Panavision System 65, with more IMAX footage than in any of Nolan’s previous films — an estimated 75%. The sparsity of dialogue made it possible for IMAX cameras, which are notoriously noisy, to be used as the primary format.”

I know that Dunkirk switches back and forth a lot between 1.90 and 1.43, and that my basic reaction was “why wasn’t it an all-IMAX thing?” I don’t want any of that shit when I see Oppenheimer — I want a pure 1.43 experience, start to finish.

The 1.90:1 aspect ratio, of course, is right next to 2:1, which Vittorio Storaro was a big supporter of (he called it Univisium). Fine, but 1.90 is not IMAX — not really.

Casting-wise, blackwashing has been a thing since the woke dambreak of ’16 or ’17. For decades Hollywood adhered to whitewash casting, and now that European paleface culture has been identified and discredited as the root of all social evils, the tables have turned — simple enough.

But I wouldn’t call the latest alleged blackwashing rumpus — i.e., Nico Parker (daughter of Ol Parker and Thandiwe Newton) being cast as Astrid Hofferson in the forthcoming live-action version of How To Train Your Dragon — especially significant.

It’s a deal, okay, but a relatively small one. Not worth anyone getting into a twist.

True, Cressida Crowell‘s original children’s books were set in a Scandinavian Viking world, which for centuries has been a white-ass culture. (Just ask Kirk Douglas.) Ditto the 2010 Dreamworks animated version — white-ass Viking men and women from top to bottom. But the new social rules (including the doctrine of presentism) require that white-culture-based stories be reassessed and updated.

Casting directors understand that it’s politically safer to roll with diverse or multicultural mindsets, even if casting an actress of color as the heroine of a centuries-old Scandinavian saga defies any common understanding of Viking history.

Diminishing the visual presence of whiteness by going multicultural has been happening for six or seven years now (ratification of the Academy’s inclusion standards made it official in 2020). Politically speaking it boils down to this: if you don’t want industry people to give the side-eye, you need to play along.

Plus one other thing: Nico Parker was very good as the daughter of Pedro Pascal‘s Joel in HBO’s The Last Of Us.

Ryan Gosling’s idea, I’m presuming, was that post-Barbie he needed to butch himself up, hence the 19th Century gold prospector beard and the styled but un-styled Sutter’s Mill coif. At the same time he didn’t want to over-smother the Barbie association, hence the unbuttoned, chest-baring black shirt and the pink western duster

Peter Yates The Friends of Eddie Coyle (’73), the Boston crime noir which HE has been praising for many years, will screen at Santa Monica’s Aero theatre on Sunday, June 4th. Pic opened a little less than 50 years ago — 6.26.73.

Director-screenwriter Larry Karaszewski will deliver a few introductory remarks prior to showtime.

My introductory remark is that the jacket art for Dave Grusin’s soundtrack album is misleading. A guy hanging one-handed from a gun barrel obviously alludes to a cliffhanger thriller of some sort. Eddie Coyle is emphatically not that. It’s a sullen, downbeat drama about cops, bad guys, wise guys, unlucky guys and all kinds of betrayal and mistrust.

Based on the George V. Higgins novel, it’s about Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum), an aging, bone-weary, lower-level weapons dealer who’s trying to make ends meet. Alas, Coyle is also looking at a long prison stretch for driving a truck with stolen goods. His only way out, he gradually realizes, is to rat out some of his “friends.”

One of the guys he’s selling to is Jimmy Scalise (Alex Rocco), the head of a gang that’s pulling off a series of bank robberies on the North Shore.

Here’s a taste of some of the George V. Higgins dialogue.

Saying ixnay to SEXISM, RACISM, FATPHOBIA, HOMOPHOBIA, TRANSPHOBIA, ABLEISM (i.e., giving shit to handicapped people and generally lording it over them) and HATEFULNESS is well and good and noble. But of course wokesters are the spiritual fathers and mothers of AGEISM, or a general all-around dismissal of older white people (and males in particular) who “don’t get” or have otherwise barked at the tenets of woke Maoism. Nobody is more ageist than wokesters — they own it from here to eternity, and it will be carved into their gravestones.

There is no apparent visual evidence that famed director Howard Hawks was ever young. There are many indications, in fact, that he was literally born at age 46 with short silver-gray hair and wearing a series of exquisitely tailored tweed sport jackets.

Hawks gradually aged, of course, into his 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond. He passed at age 81 in December 1977.

Which other Hollywood heavyweights were never young or at least persuaded a good portion of the world that they began their lives in their 40s?

Remember that Pauline Kael line that went something like “this is the kind of bad film that only a gifted director could make”? She was alluding to a strange capability among pantheon directors, which is the ability to make the occcasional stinker despite the odds favoring success.

Take, for example, Howard Hawks’ Monkey Business (’52) — a screwball comedy that leans way too far into silliness and absurdity and for the most part isn’t funny. Hawks got the mescaline comic chemistry right in Bringing Up Baby and Ball of Fire but somehow completely botched it here.

The basic unfunny idea is that an adult suddenly behaving like an adolescent is an embarrassment all around, and that “youth” is over-rated and that we’d all be better off being older and more settled and singing “we’re poor little lambs who’ve lost our way…baah-baah-baah.”

It’s about an accidentally concocted youth serum that turns everyone into an obstinate, obnoxious seven year old with no social disciplines.

Cary Grant’s seven-year-old personality is one thing, but early on he also acts like an 18 year-old who’s suddenly interested in Marilyn Monroe. It has something to do with the strength of dosage. In some cases (like Charles Coburn’s) the youth potion makes the recipient sexually frisky, or (in the case of Ginger Rogers) sexually competitve and jealous.

You know what might’ve helped? Shooting the damn thing in color. A color palette might have conveyed a certain spiritual uplift, a certain buoyancy.

Please name a few films that shouldn’t have failed given the pedigree of the talent (directors, writers, cast) but insisted on doing so regardless.