Who wrote this mini-review of Barry Lyndon, and what’s happened to this viewpoint (or ones in this general realm) among the 21st Century film culture elite? I’ll tell you what’s happened to his viewpoint. It’s been decreed, elbowed and pooh-poohed out of existence. Well, enough of that. It’s high time for a backlash, dammit. Into the doghouse with Barry Lyndon! A rarified one, I mean. The kind that houses a very rare breed of movie that is simultaneously brilliant and over-praised, and which many have watched 15 or 20 times.

“Thackeray wrote a skittish, fast-moving parody of romantic, sentimental writing. It was about the adventures of an Irish knave who used British hypocrisy for leverage. However, it must have been Barry Lyndon’s ruthless pursuit of wealth and social position rather than his spirit that attracted Stanley Kubrick. His images are fastidiously delicate in the inexpressive, peculiarly chilly manner of the English painters of the period-the mid-18th century-and it’s an ice-pack of a movie, a masterpiece in every insignificant detail.

“Kubrick suppresses most of the active elements that make movies pleasurable. The film says that people are disgusting but things are lovely. And a narrator (Sir Michael Hordern) tells you what’s going to happen before you see it. It’s a coffee-table movie; a stately tour of European high life [that’s] like a three-hour slide show for art-history majors.”

Almost every hip film aficionado and filmmaker you might run into these days swears by Lyndon, and nobody ever says or writes anything like the above. The Lyndon cult is so dug-in and well-established that it’s almost become a fascist dictatorship. There is only one way to process the emotional bloodlessness of Barry Lyndon, and that is to call it timeless, exquisite, masterful, etc.

My view has always been that it dies after Barry marries Lady Lyndon, or the simple reason that his coarse selfishness — the thing that ensures his social and financial downfall — seems to come out of nowhere.

It comes down to simple visual pleasures…yes. The thought-out, strongly fortified kind that has led me to watch the Barry Lyndon DVD 15 or 20 times, even thought I don’t care for the funereal second half. I sit through this section only because I love the Lord Bullington duel sequence and the final epilogue card that states, “Good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.”

A much cooler trailer for Michael Mann‘s Public Enemies (Universal, 7.1.09) than the one that popped through a month ago. More emphasis on John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) enjoying the role of America’s mythical/populist gangster of choice, and a bit more emphasis on doppelganger Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) and girlfriend Billie Frechette (Marion Cottillard).

But what’s with the mincingm high-pitched British accent that Billy Crudup uses in his performance as J. Edgar Hoover? He sounds like Marlon Brando in Mutiny on the Bounty.

I would have gone this way myself if I were running the marketing for Ang Lee‘s Taking Woodstock (Focus Features). Who wouldn’t? A no-brainer. The film’s 8.14.09 opening, of course, marks the precise 40th anniversary of the opening day of the Woodstock Music Festival, which ran from Friday, 8.15.69 to Sunday, 8.17.69.

Nobody on my side of the fence knows for sure if Taking Woodstock will go to Cannes. It won’t open for another five months, after all. But given the recent buildup with the trailer and poster I’d be stunned if it doesn’t play there.

I love this paragraph from the festival’s Wikipedia page about the anti-youth-culture attitude of the N.Y. Times editors of the day, and their determination to paint the festival in negative terrms. Hooray for Barnard Collier!

“As the only reporter at Woodstock for the first 36 hours or so, Barnard Collier of the New York Times was almost continually pressed by his editors in New York to make the story about the immense traffic jams, the less-than-sanitary conditions, the rampant drug use, the lack of ‘proper policing’, and the presumed dangerousness of so many young people congregating.

“Collier recalls: ‘Every major Times editor up to and including executive editor James Reston insisted that the tenor of the story must be a social catastrophe in the making. It was difficult to persuade them that the relative lack of serious mischief and the fascinating cooperation, caring and politeness among so many people was the significant point. I had to resort to refusing to write the story unless it reflected to a great extent my on-the-scene conviction that ‘peace’ and ‘love’ was the actual emphasis, not the preconceived opinions of Manhattan-bound editors.

“After many acrimonious telephone exchanges, the editors agreed to publish the story as I saw it, and although the nuts-and-bolts matters of gridlock and minor lawbreaking were put close to the lead of the stories, the real flavor of the gathering was permitted to get across. After the first day’s Times story appeared on page 1, the event was widely recognized for the amazing and beautiful accident it was.”

At yesterday’s Congressional hearing in Van Nuys about illegal movie downloading, Steven Soderbergh reportedly suggested that the U.S. should adopt a not-yet-passed French law project (nicknamed DADOPI) that would cut off an offender’s internet service after three warnings. What’s wrong with that idea? It would certainly cut into piracy revenues.

Vanity Fair‘s Julian Sanction, who speaks French, doesn’t care for it. Earlier today he explained the particulars in a mocking way.

(1) “Individuals will be charged not for downloading illegal content, but rather for failing to properly secure their internet access. So even if some guy parks his car behind your house and poaches your service to download, say, the complete works of Jerry Lewis, you will be held responsible.”

(2) “Those charged with illegal downloading will be sent two e-mail warnings, followed by a third warning by registered letter.”

(3) “If offenders re-offend within one year of being warned, their Internet service can be cut off for a period of two months to a year, or one to three months if they promise not to do it again.”

(4) “Offenders whose Internet service is cut off would continue to pay their providers during the period of suspension.

(5) “The law will be retroactive, meaning there is to be no amnesty for people caught downloading content illegally before the law is passed.

(6) “To further discourage illegal downloading, lawmakers have proposed reducing the DVD window to four months rather than six.”

What is Billy Bob Thornton‘s problem? What a sullen asshole. QTV host Jian Ghomeshi introduced him as an “Oscar-winning screenwriter, actor, and director” when doing an interview with Thornton and his band, The Boxmasters. Thornton took offense that he was being referred to (in his head) as some kind of musical hobbyist.

Criterion can never atone for its Third Man Bluray, but at least they’re out of the doghouse now. The reason is their Wages of Fear Bluray, which I’ve seen and is quite beautiful all around. Superb detail and contrast, and grain levels that are acceptable by my stringent standards. A digital creation, obviously, but one that looks like film in the most refined sense. Clouzot himself would be amazed.

I haven’t seen Henri-George Clouzot‘s 1953 classic since catching it at the Thalia in 1981 or thereabouts. I’ve decided, however, that William Friedkin‘s 1976 remake, Sorcerer, is just as strong and jolting, and in some ways a better story, and in other ways more believable, certainly during the first half. The word for decades has been that Clouzot’s film is unquestionably superior. I don’t buy that any more. They’re more evenly matched now.

At the end of a capsule review of William Wyler‘s Ben-Hur, Pauline Kael asked, “Has anyone ever been able to detect the contributions to the script of Gore Vidal, Christopher Fry, and S.N. Behrman? Could they?” They could here, I think, in a discussion of messiahs and gods. Five words — “Quite profound, some of it” — sound like they belong to Vidal.

And I’ve always loved the way Stephen Boyd gestures and glances twice at the sky as he derisively refers to God, whom he refers to as “that.”

Another discussion about grain came up this morning. I was complaining again about Criterion’s Bluray grainstorming of The Third Man, and HE reader “Cde” said that Criterion “doesn’t give films a ‘grainstorm’ treatment. Films give Criterion grain and Criterion accepts [it] rather than trying to scrub away the look of film from decades past with a digital smear.

And I said, “For the 81st time in the last six months, I understand that grain originates on film. What you need to understand is that grain was an unfortunate, aesthetically undesirable monkey on the backs of filmmakers in past decades. It’s not some beautiful and essential element in age-old film composition. Grain is like acne upon the face of classic cinema, and if there had been some first-rate acne medication back in the day we wouldn’t be talking about it today.

“Grain has been sentimentalized out of all proportion by the monks. And Criterion, to go by its Third Man Bluray disc, is one of the monk institutions that worships grain as something that bestows authenticity upon classic film restorations. Which it does, in a way. Except it doesn’t add anything to the artistic intentions of the filmmakers. Nothing except a kind of smothering sandstorm effect, I mean. Do you honestly think that dps of the ’30s through the ’70s said to their director-collaborators, ‘We have a chance to get some really wonderful grain elements from this scene if we light it right’?

“Criterion didn’t ‘accept’ grain in its Third Man Bluray disc — it fetishized it. You could almost imagine the Criterion technicians experiencing erotic arousal as they lovingly retained the grain from Carol Reed‘s 1949 classic.

“As I’ve said many, many times, there are several shades of digital degranulating that can be applied. Grain purists are always saying ‘do you want the real thing as it was rendered back in the ’30s, ’40s or ’50s, or some digitally arid smearing of what the original directors and dps intended?’ John Lowry of Lowry Digital has shown time and again that the grain levels can be taken down in a very delicate and considerate manner without creating a video-game effect.”

“As a young man I had an old man’s career, [and] now maybe as an old man I can have a young man’s career,” the 70 year-old Francis Coppola said recently to the San Francisco Film Society’s Jason Sanders. “I feel like I’m doing what I wanted to do when I was 18.” And in reverting to the creative spirit of a young man, Coppola has made perhaps the worst film of his career (Youth Without Youth) and another that Coppola is self-distributing (the forthcoming Tetro).

It makes you wonder if having enough money to finance your own films (which Coppola has through his wine company) is all that great a thing. It seems to confirm a long-held suspicion that the rough-and-tumble process of commercial Hollywood occasonally results in better films than those financed by genteel types with their artistic hearts in the right place. It’s almost shattering to think that the name Francis Coppola has come to signify the exact opposite of what it stood for in the ’70s — an assurance of audacity, a deliverer of first-rate chops, a maker of films you absolutely had to see.

The Orlando Sentinel‘s Roger Moore got in touch last week with a question about Tyson director James Toback. “I thought you might have a take on whatever natural connection Toback might have with Tyson,” he asked. “I know he did the journalism and Jim Brown thing early on. Is the fact that he and Tyson are both outsiders the most relevant factor, or is something else drawing them together?

I answered as follows: “James Toback’s handle has long been that of a brilliant, nervy, larger-than-life type with a risky existential attitude about things. Meaning that he likes to fly high and flirt with the edge, propelled by a standard gambler psychology mixed with charm and audacity and the usual big-city appetites.

“Being a gambler, Toback has always loved sports and the company of athletes. And so he’s naturally attracted to Tyson, a former world champion athlete who’s also a bit of a danger junkie. Like every boxing champ since the begining of time, Tyson put his life and career on the line every time he stepped into the ring. His edge attraction has led him to flirt with ruin in the form of drugs, arrests, living beyond his means, biting Holyfield’s ear, etc. Always a bit of the mad man lurking within.

“I also think Toback feels sorry for Tyson now that his high-flying days are over. Which clearly comes through in the film.”

I went searching for Moore’s piece on the Orlando Sentinel website, but the search engine is ridiculous. Sony Classics is opening Tyson on 4.24.

I should have linked by now to Moises Chiullan’s 4.6 piece about the Star Trek screening at the Alamo Draft House. (Leading excuses include yesterday’s half-day shutdown, urgent business in the city, screenings, etc.) In any case here it is. Rapturous, glowing, hosannahs, fanboy flutter, my wife loved it, etc.

If I sound a bit cynical, it’s because I’ve concluded that any mainstream feature that premieres at the Alamo Drafthouse is going to inspire waves of orgasms among the Austin fanboys and film obsessives. Which you can never trust, I suspect, because these guys are always allowing their reactions to be colored by feelings of hometown flattery (“You chose our fair city to preview your brand-new movie? We love you!”). And because you can’t trust fanboys, especially when the film has anything to do with galactic derring-do.

Having seen about 25 or 30 minutes worth of Star Trek footage last December (or was it late November?), I have to say that director JJ Abrams‘ vision of a new-generation Star Trek starring nothing but under-35 types feels like a kind of GenY Bugsy Malone in space. At least as far as Chris Pine‘s Cpt. Kirk and Zachary Quinto‘s Spock are concerned. Everyone else seems a good 10 to 15 years younger than the actors in the original Gene Roddenberry TV series. Or is this because actors in the mid ’60s looked older than their counterparts today?

The upside is that Abrams has at least come up with his own take, sufficiently divorced from the William Shatner-Leonard Nimoy imprint. What I saw was visually striking (i.e., well designed), thrilling and so on. And I like Quinto’s sharply focused manner — the steady gaze of his jet-black eyes and the way he drills in on his matter-of-fact dialogue. So I didn’t feel like it was the wrong way to go. A lot of people are going to be delighted with Star Trek. It’s going to make a lot of money.

It did, however, feel friggin’ young to me. I guess I had trouble believing that the senior administrators who selected the crew of the Enterprise would adopt as their motto, “We have a ship that cost several billion to make and requires the best crew we can find, so let’s not choose anyone who looks older than 35!”

My main problem was with Pine. The man has nothing going on behind his eyes. He has the face and the soul of a guy who makes surfboards and boogie boards in his Venice Beach garage. Or that of a Santa Monica lifeguard. Or a Harley Davidson salesman on Lincoln Blvd. south of Washington. On top of which I felt that Anton Yelchin‘s Checkov accent was way over the top.

Anyway, here’s Chiullan’s take:

“Star Trek is an unrelenting, slam-bang naval war movie that rarely catches its own breath,” he wrote. “Shades of swashbucklers and submarine thrillers alike are all over the storytelling with all kinds of smash-bam-kaboom stuff going on throughout. It’s packed to the gills with escapist heroism with a healthy dose of optimism. There’s plenty of room for interpretation for those who want to look for some allegory that is or isn’t intended. The key is that Abrams and his team have bottled that ’77 stuff of legend.

No Star Trek film “has never been this visually dynamic. The camera work is full of lens flares, reflections, and focus effects that really sell the atmosphere. You also have a more nuts n’ bolts, gaskets n’ pipes-styled Enterprise, where the ship feels like a labyrinthine submarine merged with an aircraft carrier. The mixture of practical and CG alien and creature effects are also fantastic, with all kinds of new stuff never seen before in the franchise in terms of design or quality.

“Bruce Greenwood grounds the movie early on in a scene with Kirk at a bar. Chris Pine puts his own spin on Kirk that faithfully captures what hotshots like him are all about at that age. There have always been smart, capable guys who do stupid things for the hell of it, wanting a direction for their life to drop out of the sky. Karl Urban plays “Southern” as Dr. McCoy more authentically than any European or Australian who’s tried in recent memory. Simon Pegg steals each scene he’s in where he opens his mouth, which is to say every scene in which he appears.

“Everyone else is great, but I don’t want to go on forever here. The Enterprise crew all do impulsive, stupid things, but that’s what that age is like, isn’t it? I’ll add that Anton Yelchin is fine as Chekhov. Don’t let early reports from footage screenings convince you his pronunciation gag ruins things. He plays it straight as an actual speech impediment, and it worked for me.”

Directed and written by Nora Ephron, Julie & Julia (Sony, 8.7) is primarily about devotion and rapture in the preparation of exquisite cuisine. Or, to speak more fundamentally, about how the best things in life come from love and worship. It’s built upon the life of famed chef Julia Child (Meryl Streep) but more particularly Child’s influence upon fan, fellow devotee and author Julie Powell (Amy Adams).

The through-line of the film is an online project by Powell, begun in 2002, in which she wrote about her daily experiences of cooking each of the 524 recipes in Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Powell eventually turned her blog into a book, Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen (Little, Brown, 2005), which was retitled Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously (Back Bay Books, 2006) when it went to paperback.

Ephron’s screenplay is adapted from Powell’s book as well as My Life in France, an autobiography cowritten by Child and Alex Prud’homme. Both books adapted by Ephron were written and published in the same time frame of 2004-06. Ephron began filming Julie & Julia in March 2008. Obviously aimed at an older female crowd, this seems moderately inviting from my perspective.

Besides the Powell angle, the film also covers the years Child and her husband Paul Cushing (Stanley Tucci) spent in Paris during the 1940s and 1950s, when he was a foreign diplomat who was eventually investigated by Sen. Joseph McCarthy for alleged communist ties.