Paolo Sorrentino‘s Il Divo (MPI, 4.24) is an immaculate, highly stylized film about former Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti and his political career, particularly the events that led to revelations about his ties to the Italian mafia and his reported complicity in the murder of a journalist.

I saw it last year in Cannes, and my immediate reaction was basically (a) “a first-rate political drama but probably too Italian to play in the U.S.” and (b) “a brilliant Andreotti performance by Toni Servillo.” I’ll be seeing it again on 4.14 at a special tastemaker screening in midtown Manhattan. MPI is the U.S. distributor, but Focus Features chief James Schamus will be hosting.

Il Divo opened in Italy a few days after its 5.23.09 bow in Cannes. Most of the rest of the world saw it last summer and last fall. Now it’s finally opening here.

Some films are like fruit. They need to be picked when they achieve ripeness, and if you wait too long to eat them they’ll have a diminished quality — they’ll feel too soft and won’t taste as good. Too much time and dust and delay dilutes the potency. You have to see it in a relatively fresh state.

Of course, some movies age well, like wine, and when you wind up seeing them two or five or ten years after their initial theatrical release you sip them and go “aaahhh” — excellent! So is Il Divo fruit or wine? Maybe it’s both. I haven’t decided yet.

A friend thinks I’m a bit off on my shelf-life ttheory. “Many films have come out a year after their Cannes premieres — The Wind That Shakes The Barley (which did very well here), The Last Mistress, Flight of the Red Balloon. I could understand where you’re coming from if Il Divo was a film that was so of-the-moment that its topicality or resonance would have really diminished over time (an Iraq-related film for instance) but Il Divo‘s themes of political power and corruption are pretty evergreen. And its formal brilliance can never age”

“I don’t know if you know this, but both the MGM and Universal film library have been fully converted to HD format,” a friend writes. “Many of the titles (including some of the films that you mentioned earlier today) are being withheld from consumer distribution so that they can be shown exclusively on HD cable channels that Universal owns.”

There are plenty of lists of highly regarded films that need to be given an upgrade and a fresh release on DVD or Bluray. The much bigger category, of course, are films that were issued decades ago on VHS (or were never released at all), and need to make their DVD or digital download debut. I’ve been clamoring for years for the release of DVDs (at the very least) of David Jones‘ Betrayal, Frank Perry‘s Play It As It Lays and John Flynn‘s The Outfit, as HE regulars well know.

I scanned through this Pauline Kael capsule review site for some titles that would be at least somewhat diverting to have on DVD or Bluray or both. What I came up with, mostly, was mediocre but watchable junk. Some have cloudy reputations, some were directed by “made” guys, some had good casts, a few starred Sandy Dennis and others are just oddball failures and half-and-halfers from the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.

But older junk has an intrigue that newer junk lacks. Second-tier diversions ain’t what they used to be. 21st Century blow-chunk levels are appalling. Now you get nervy throw-away crap from guys like Jody Hill with their baseball caps and seven-day beard growths and fat asses. Back then crap seemed…I don’t know, tidier or something. A bit more layered and better prepared. Sometimes you got an awkward fumble or flat-out failure from the likes of Robert Mulligan, Mark Rydell, Paul Mazursky, etc. And if you were stuck with a major stinker, there was at least a nude scene or some gratuitous sex thrown in. It was the fashion back then.

I’ve listed about eleven titles for starters. I might not want to own these films, but I’d definitely rent them. Some of them are better than crap-level but they’ve faded from circulation out of boredom or irrelevance. There are hundreds more that make the grade in this sense. I might even run a Part Two tomorrow.

Alex in Wonderland (1969) — director: Paul Mazursky. Cast: Donald Sutherland, Ellen Burstyn, Michael Lerner, Mazursky.

The Actress (1953) — director: George Cukor. Cast: Jean Simmons, Spencer Tracy, Teresa Wright, Anthony Perkins (making his debut), Jackie Coogan.

The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968) — director: Robert Aldrich. Cast: Peter Finch, Kim Novak, Ernest Borgnine.

In The Cool of the Day (1963) — director: Robert Stevens. Cast: Jane Fonda, Peter Finch, Arthur Hill.

That Cold Day in the Park (1969) — director: Robert Altman. Cast: Sandy Dennis, Michael Burns, Susanne Benton, David Garfield, Luana Anders, Michael Murphy.

Up The Down Staircase (1967) — director: Robert Mulligan. Cast: Sandy Dennis, Patrick Bedford, Eileen Heckart, Ruth White, Jean Stapleton.

The Fox (1967) — director: Mark Rydell. Cast: Anne Heywood, Sandy Dennis, Keir Dullea.

Thumb Trippin’ (1972) — director: Quentin Masters.

Midas Run (1969) — director: Alf Kjellin. Cast: Anne Heywood, Richard Crenna, Fred Astaire, Ceasar Romero.

The legendary At Long Last Love (1973) — director: Peter Bogdanovich. Cast: Burt Reynolds, Cybill Shepherd, Madeline Kahn, Duilio Del Prete, Eileen Brennan.

Brewster Mccloud (1972) — dierctor: Robert Altman. Cast: Bud Cort, Sally Kellerman, Michael Murphy, William Windom, Shelley Duvall, Rene Auberjonois, Stacy Keach.

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.