Eric Spiegelman, writing on a blog called Bus Your Own Tray, has made available a 1971 documentary executive produced by John Ford called Vietnam! Vietnam! Narrated by Charlton Heston, it was reportedly (and is evidently, to judge from having watched about 20 minutes’ worth) a work of propaganda commissioned by the U.S. government in support of the Vietnam War.

Vietnam! Vietnam! from Eric Spiegelman on Vimeo.
It is also, to put it mildly, a stain upon Ford’s hallowed reputation. An Irish Catholic and an unfettered patriot for most of his life, Ford was a rabid reactionary toward the end of his life, and took particular issue with anti-war movement and the whole long-hair hippie movement. Snarrrl!
Production on Vietnam! Vietnam! “began a few months after the Tet Offensive, and by the time the film was completed at the end of 1971, American policy toward the war shifted toward withdrawal and negotiation for peace,” Spiegleman writes. “As such, the film√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s message was obsolete and embarrassing the moment it was ready for distribution. It was never released.
“Federal law at the time prohibited the domestic exhibition of any motion picture financed by the U.S. Information Agency, which included Vietnam! Vietnam!. Ford√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s last documentary remained locked away in a vault for the next 27 years (i.e., until this year), when a change in the law allowed the National Archives to make it available to the public.
Spiegelman “learned about the existence of Vietnam! Vietnam! three years ago,” he writes. “Curiosity led me to pull the ancient reels from the National Archives and have them digitized. Years of neglect badly damaged the audio portion of the first half of the film, and my cousin painstakingly restored the soundtrack to the best of his ability.
“The documentary is, actually, quite terrible. Nothing about it even approximates a John Ford masterpiece. Accounts vary as to the extent that Ford was actively involved in the production — he apparently spent time on location in Vietnam toward the beginning of the shoot, but his advanced age and poor health kept him home during almost all of the principal photography. According to Ford scholar Tag Gallagher, Ford supervised the editing of the film and rewrote its scenario.
“Regardless, John Ford clearly wanted his name associated with Vietnam! Vietnam! — it reflected his strong belief in the cause — and it is incontrovertibly part of his repertoire.
“I offer the film here because it√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s a little piece of American history that very few people have seen, and for that reason alone it belongs on the internet.”
Any words, Joe McBride?

Morgan Spurlock‘s Super-Size Me made a convincing case for the harmful effects of a pure-McDonalds’ diet. I wonder if anyone has ever established a link between people suffering heart attacks and eating an Egg McMuffin (or worse, a Sausage McMuffin!) each and every day? I’m asking because the guy who invented the Egg McMuffin, Herb Peterson, the architect of the clogged American artery, died two days ago.

We know it’s not healthy, but I’ve eaten dozens of Sausage McMuffins over the years. I blame myself primarily, of course, but I also blame McDonalds for serving up the damn things. I’ve probably reduced my lifespan because of my weakness, but also because cackling McDonalds guys made them available, like any heroin dealer.

In the view of two knowledgable guys interviewed by AP reporter David Germain, Heath Ledger‘s death will — sadly, ironically — be a kind of boon to the fortunes of The Dark Knight (Warner Bros., 7.18). Germain states that Chris Nolan‘s film “has already emerged as arguably the biggest movie featuring a posthumous role in Hollywood history.”

Everyone is tiring of seeing this same old Heath/Joker photo over and over — it would be nice if Warner Bros. would remedy this.

Bill Ramey, founder of the fansite Batman-on-Film.com, says that “more people will come to see [Knight] because of Ledger’s death. No doubt some people may be apprehensive about seeing it because there may be a little ghoulish factor about it. But I’m betting that more people now kind of look at it as a tribute to him, and the biggest tribute you could give someone is to go see it and enjoy his performance.”
Ball State University film professor Wes Gehring says “it’s a tacky thing to say, but what would have been a negative in the past now could be a positive thing. I think we’ve done a flip-flop on pop culture. Now it might actually be a selling point for a movie where you say, ‘So and so’s dead. Let’s go see his movie.’ What might have been a hindrance in 1935 now won’t be a problem.”
The list of major actors who starred in films after their deaths includes (1) James Dean (both Rebel Without a Cause and Giant opened after his car-crash death in September 1955), (2) Clark Gable (The Misfits came out 75 days after his passing on 11.16.60)), (3) Carole Lombard (To Be or Not To Be opened two months after her plane-crash demise), (4) Spencer Tracy (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner arrived in December ’67, six months after Tracy’s death on 6.10.67), (5) Jean Harlow (Saratoga opened six weeks after her death on 6.7.37), (6) Robert Walker (My Son John came out in April 1952, 9 months after his death in August ’51), and (7) Montgomery Clift (whose final film, The Defector, came out in mid-November 1966, about five months after his death in July of that year.)

I’ve been told about three casting “likes” for Oliver Stone‘s W — i.e., actors who are wanted for the George Bush bopic but not (as far as my source knows) signed. Toby Jones (who plays legendary super-agent Swifty Lazar in Ron Howard‘s Frost/Nixon) is being sought to play Karl Rove. They want Jeffrey Wright to play Colin Powell, and they’d like Tommy Lee Jones to have a go at Donald Rumsfeld. Again — nothing firm, no contracts.

Toby Jones (l.), Karl Rove (r.)

On the other hand, New York is reporting it could be Paul Giamatti as Rove. I actually like that a little better than Jones.

Tracking on 21 (opening Friday) has surged — it’s now at 72, 49 and 30, which should translate to somewhere north of $25 million and possibly up to $30 million. David Schwimmer‘s Run Fat Boy Run (Picturehouse) is at 62, 29 and 6. Kimberly Peirce‘s Stop-Loss is at 47, 29 and 9. Superhero Movie is running at 75, 31 and 13 — decent numbers, fairly good business.
George Clooney‘s Leatherheads (4.4) is at 70, 37 and 11 or 12…not bad, will open decently. Nim’s Island is at 52 27 and 3. The Ruins (also 4.4) is running at 46 , 22 and 2.
Prom Night (4.11) is at 58, 30 and 5. Smart People is at 34, 21 and 1. And David Ayer‘s Street Kings is now at 44, 34 and 4.
88 Minutes (4.18) is at 38, 37 and 4. The Forbidden Kingdom, a Jet Li-Jackie Chan martial-arts movie, is at 52, 43 and 8….promising. And Forgetting Sarah Marshall is running at 38, 28 and 2.

New Republic senior editor Christopher Orr has written a review of Robert Luketic’s 21 (Sony, 3.26) that’s based solely on the trailer. The point is that with 97% of today’s trailers giving 97% of the film away, who needs to see the feature? Orr says he’ll review the film itself tomorrow. I’ve seen the long version of 21 and can say with authority that Orr’s reactions aren’t very different from reviews of the film.

I knew the movie would be simultaneously pretty good and not great based on the opening trailer clip. Jim Sturgess, a part-time retail salesman, quickly tallies some numbers and percentages in front of a couple of customers. His character, an MIT student, is obviously a numerical whiz, but the moment is ruined when he smiles sheepishly and says to the customers, “I’m pretty good with numbers.” Nothing kills like over-emphasis.

Arizona Daily Star‘s Phil Villarreal is reporting that Kevin Smith‘s Zack and Miri Make a Porno (with Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks) will be released by the Weinstein Co. on 10.31. Phil says he was “was sour on the past couple Smith movies” but has a feeling “this one will match the excellence and rewatchable hiliarity of Smith’s first four: Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy and Dogma, with an honorable mention for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. (Which I liked as well.)
The problem, for me, is that Villarreal has posted the one thing that’s given me pause — that “I”m Fucking Seth Rogen” music video that seemed really stale because it conspicuously rode the tail of the Sarah Silverman and Jimmy Kimmel videos that preceded it.

This Lou Dobbs-dissing trailer for Under The Same Moon (Fox Searchlight, limited) is fairly amusing. Created in-house by the Fox Searchlight guys, It’s airing on CNN today, and particularly on Dobbs’ news and commentary show.

Patricia Riggen‘s film, written by Ligiah Villalobos, is a heart-warming tale of a Mexican immigrant mom working as a domestic in Los Angeles, and her Mexico-residing son from whom she’s separated. Dobbs has been hating on illegal Mexican immigrants for years. There are three quotes in the trailer alluding to the film’s presumed emotional effect upon Dobbs — making him cry, melting his heart, etc.

There’s something hugely satisfying in Chuck Todd and Domenico Montanaro‘s “MSNBC First Read” summaries, which I read each and every morning. I love the internal-office-memo prose style. Their stuff is straight and unpretentious, and always fortified with comprehensive reporting and sharp observations.

The most interesting aspect of Michael Cieply‘s 3.27 N.Y. Times story about the impending divorce between Paramount and DreamWorks is the photo of Laura Ramsey and Jena Malone in The Ruins (DreamWorks, 4.4), an apparently standard kids-in-peril horror film from director Carter Smith and screenwriter /novelist Scott B. Smith. The subdued lighting and amber tones are intriguing, which is more than you can say for Ceiply’s story about clashing egos.

The IMDB keywords for The Ruins include the following: Severed Leg, Accidental Killing, Tequila, Cell Phone, Mexico, Corpse, Chase Scene, Shower Scene, Surgery Scene, Parasite Underneath Skin, Disturbing, Dance Scene, Vacation, Beach, Shot In The Head, Gore, Knife, Fall From Height, Loss Of Brother, Shot To Death, Pistol, Archeological Dig, Broken Leg, Loss Of Friend, Male Nudity, Female Nudity, Vomit Scene, Bow And Arrow, Stabbed in the Chest, Blood Spatter, Suffocation, Cheating On Boyfriend, Breasts, Self Mutilation, Shot In The Chest, Death, Skeleton, Based On Novel and Twist In The End.

HE reactions to Oliver Stone‘s casting choices on W, his about-to-shoot Dubya drama which will star Josh Brolin. Elizabeth Banks, 34, seems too young to play First Lady Laura Bush, who was just shy of 50 when her husband became the Texas governor and 54 when he was inaugurated as President on 1.20.01. James Cromwell as George H.W. Bush — perfect, but he’ll have to be de-aged. Ellen Burstyn as Barbara Bush — fine.
Finding the right guy to portray Dick Cheney will be a make-or-breaker. It’ll be more of a matter of someone who can get the voice right — “So?” Richard Dreyfuss?
Stone wrote the screenplay with his Wall Street co-writer Stanley Weiser. W “is expected to be ready for distribution possibly by the November presidential elections and certainly before Bush leaves the White House in January,” Variety‘s Michael Fleming wrote yesterday.

No two ways about it — Martin Scorsese‘s Shine a Light needs to be seen in the IMAX format. It’ll be agreeable in regular 35mm — fun, engaging — but the wow factor will be missing. The Rolling Stones concert film was shot in a semi-intimate setting — Manhattan’s Beacon Theatre — and the intense close-ups and gigantic size of the bodies and faces of Mick Jagger, Keith Richard, Ron Wood and Charlie Watts make it seem even more so. This movie is all over you.

An approximation of the IMAX aspect ratio (1.43 to 1) of Shine a Light

Robert Richardson‘s camerawork (with celebrated dps like John Toll and Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki working as camera operators) swings, soars and glides with pulsing rhythm. At times the camera dives and swoops like a hawk. At times it makes you feel as if you’re literally dancing alongside Jagger, but with the kind of exacting discipline that Gene Kelly brought to his big dance numbers in those ’50s MGM musicals. (With maybe a little Twyla Tharp thrown in.) The cutting is clean and smooth and exhilarating at times. The film has a phenomenal visual energy.
Scorsese starts things off with a 10- or 12-minute short in a relatively small and boxy (1.33 to 1) black-and-white format. Scorsese is the lead character at this point — the director asking questions, sorting things through, being told he can’t do this or that, etc. This is the footage of the show’s planning, preparation, logistics. And it’s very engaging. But the split-second that the show begins….wham! We’re IMAX-ed up — in color with the images suddenly twice as tall and four or five times louder, and we’re off to the races.
It’s thrilling in nearly the exact same way that audiences were wowed when This is Cinerama! (’53) went from boxy black-and-white newsreel footage of Lowell Thomas to a sudden cut to the full-color, three-camera Cinerama shot of a mountain range as the music soared and the curtains parted to make room for a much taller, super-wide image.

Approximation of the 35mm aspect ratio (1.85 to 1) of the same shot

I can’t imagine how this effect can be delivered on a conventional 35mm screen, and I’m not precisely sure how the IMAX image I saw last night at L.A.’s Bridge Cinema will be presented in a “flat” format. The IMAX aspect ratio is on the boxy side with an aspect ratio of 1.43 to 1. Movies in regular theatres are projected at 1.85 to 1 or, if filmed and projected in Scope, 2.39 to 1. The Shine a Light bottom line is that either (a) the 35mm non-IMAX version will present more visual information on the sides in order to fill out a wider 1.85 to 1 image, or (b) the IMAX will be cropped to create a 1.85 to 1 aspect ratio on 35 mm. Am I being confusing?
I’ll try to figure this out tomorrow morning. I tried to get a clear understanding of whether the 35mm image will be wider than the IMAX image but smaller in scale, or whether it will be a less tall version of the IMAX image. I asked and asked and asked, and nobody really knew.
The power of those IMAX speakers…my God! And the re-animated groove that the Stones get into with 80% of the songs is sublime. Before last night I thought I’d heard “Tumblin’ Dice” once too often, but the version in the film is so hypnotically cool and soul-freeing that I’d now like to find a soundtrack recording, or at least an iTunes track of this particular rendition. The only rote performances are of the big headline songs (“Start Me Up,” “Brown Sugar,” etc.) The less well-known ones are mostly transcendent. The relatively quiet and contained performance of “As Tears Go By” is a classic.
The IMAX closeups of all those jowls, turkey necks and crows feet on the Stones’ faces are something really new and different in the annals of rock-concert films. This sounds like I’m being a smart-ass, but I found them genuinely cool and fascinating. Keith looks like a Peter Jackson CG creation, a Lord of the Rings troll.
Did director Gore Verbinski put make-up on Richards for his Pirates of the Caribbean cameo? I walked out before Richards’ scene (the film was despicable), but I saw an online photo of Richards and Johnny Depp and it looked to me like Keith’s face was all gunked up. If he looked this way in the film Verbinksi needlessly embroidered one of the world’s great natural weirdnesses.
Shine a Light ends with a knockout Scorsese tracking shot — a half-real, half digital thing in which a single hand-held camera seems to follow Jagger and the others as they make their way through the backstage throng and out the stage door. Scorsese himself, absent since the early black-and-white footage, makes two appearances in this sequence. And then the camera alights and soars over Manhattan and…I don’t want to over-describe, but it’s beautiful.