Just a reminder that seven and a half years ago HE was the first and only Hollywood column to post a fixed version of the climactic “noon train is approaching” High Noon montage in Fred Zinnemann and Stanley Kramer‘s High Noon (’52).

On 12.2.15 I posted Matthew Morretini‘s version of the montage, which is more metronomically correct than the original 1952 version, which was assembled by editor Elmo Williams.

“The famous High Noon tick-tock sequence has always bothered me slightly,” I wrote. “It was edited to match Dimitri Tiomkin‘s music, and so every cut was supposed to happen at the precise instant of the final beat…except it doesn’t quite do that. Today editor Matthew Morettini wrote to say the reason for my slight irritation is that the picture is four frames ahead of the music.

“But now Morettini has fixed it.

“‘I’m a professional editor and had a few minutes on my hands today and re-synced the clip the way I always felt it should be,’ Morettini wrote. “And guess what? It’s better. Each and every picture edit was exactly four frames early.”

Compare the Morettini version (top) to the Elmo Williams version (below) — the proof is in the pudding.

Matthew Morettini 2015 version:

Elmo Williams 1952 version:

Boilerplate commentary: Rio Bravo (’59) and High Noon (’52) don’t share a “general genre” as much as they share a fairly specific plot/situation, which is an honest lawman (or lawmen) preparing to do battle with a gang of bad guys who will soon arrive in town and are out for blood revenge.

The films, in fact, are pretty much peas in a pod. Rio Bravo was in fact dreamt up as a response to what director Howard Hawks and star John Wayne saw as the pessimism and wimpishness of Will Kane, the resolute small-town sheriff played by Gary Cooper.

Both films are about a community’s response to the threat of lawnessness and violence, and about the lawman’s (or lawmen’s) code of honor and self-respect.

In Rio Bravo‘s case, the chief villain is Nathan Burdette. In the matter of High Noon, it’s a recently sprung prison convict named Frank Miller.

Rio Bravo is more optimistic or positive-minded in that the community (Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Walter Brennan, Angie Dickinson) bands together to fight the baddies; in High Noon the community hides or equivocates or otherwise declines to help Kane form a posse so they can meet Miller and his three gunnies head on. They all say no for their own reasons, and Kane is forced to stand up to the gang all alone.

Before clicking on this link, please understand that HE is profusely apologizing for posting it. I have no excuse except for this: I’m fascinated by AI’s ability to own and manipulate the voice of Barry Lyndon‘s narrator, Michael Hordern.

The below scene, of course, is the one that has killed most viewers’ interest in Barry Lyndon over the decades. Specifically Ryan O’Neal blowing smoke into Marisa Berenson‘s face. The instant this act of sociopathic callousness happened, I checked out. The scene completely nullifies all emotional engagement in the tale until the death of Barry and Lady Lyndon’s son Brian (David Morley), which is followed by the climactic duel between Barry and Lord Bullington (Leon Vitali).

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Written by Letterboxd’s Doug Dillaman and initially highlighted by World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy, the following is one of the greatest negative pull-quotes I’ve ever heard in my entire life.

I can’t wait for the Average Joe & Jane anti-woke community blowback….I’m getting damp just thinking about it. And no, I’m not including the Christian Broadcast Network response, which sounds fringey.

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Imagine how twisted and constipated a young hard-working banker would have to be to write the below confession. This sicko actually felt “uncomfortable” about being being given an early morning wake-up by his live-in-girlfriend, mainly because he hadn’t given prior “consent“, and so he “told her to stop” and then left their apartment without speaking, which led to the g.f. apologizing “countless times.”

Conclusion #1: Banker dude is beyond the reach of psychiatric therapy. Conclusion #2: The relationship is doomed.

I waited and thought about and generally settled into Jane Birkin’s passing, and I just couldn’t think of anything heartfelt to say other than I felt sorry for her family and friends. My only vivid imprint is the Blow–Up violet paper orgy scene (filmed when she was 19 or 20) and the very first glimpse of female pubic hair in a mainstream movie — a swingin’ Londön cultural benchmark if there ever was one.

Richard Roud’s embarassing Guardian review of Blow-Up.

This morning I read Seth Abramovitch‘s THR piece about Tatum O’Neal (7.17.23), titled “After Her Debilitating Stroke, Tatum O’Neal Attempts to Heal a Fractured Relationship With Dad Ryan O’Neal.”

Subhead: “Recovering from an overdose-induced crisis that nearly killed her and forced her to relearn how to speak, the actress looks back on her life and career: ‘Weird shit happened. It kind of went in the wrong direction to happiness.'”

The apparently ailing but buoyant-of-spirit Ryan O’Neal, 82, and daughter Tatum, 59 — posted on Instagram last April.

“Ryan O’Neal’s Five Untouchable Years,” posted on 8.4.19:

I prefer to sidestep the biological reality of Ryan O’Neal being 78, and to think of him as the guy he was in the early to mid ’70s, when things were as good as they would ever get for him.

I had two minor run-ins with O’Neal in the ’80s. The first was after an evening screening of the re-issued Rear Window** at West L.A.’s Picwood theatre (corner of Pico and Westwood) in late ’83. As the crowd spilled onto Pico O’Neal and his date (probably Farrah Fawcett) were walking right behind me, and I heard O’Neal say “that was sooo good!” Being a huge Alfred Hitchcock fan, this sparked a feeling of kinship.

Four years later I was a Cannon publicity guy and charged with writing the press kit for Norman Mailer‘s Tough Guys Don’t Dance, which didn’t turn out so well. I for one liked Mailer’s perverse sense of humor.

I did an hour-long phoner with O’Neal, and my opening remark was that he was becoming a really interesting actor now that he was in his mid 40s with creased features. He was too good looking when younger, I meant, and so his being 46 added character and gravitas. O’Neal was skeptical of my assessment but went along — what the hell.

In fact O’Neal’s career had been declining for a good five or six years at that point. He knew it, I knew it — we were doing a press-kit-interview dance because there was nothing else to say or do.

O’Neal’s last hit film had been Howard Zeiff and Gail Parent‘s The Main Event (’79), which critics panned but was popular with audiences. He had starred in four mezzo-mezzos before that — Peter Bogdanovich‘s Nickelodeon (’76), Richard Attenbrough‘s A Bridge Too Far (’77), Walter Hill‘s The Driver (’78) and John Korty‘s Oliver’s Story.

Consider this HE anecdote about some 41-year-old graffiti on a New York subway poster.

O’Neal’s career peak lasted for five years (’70 to ’75) and was fortified by a mere four films — Arthur Hiller‘s Love Story (’70), Bogdanovich’s What’s Up Doc? (’72) and Paper Moon (’73), and Stanley Kubrick‘s Barry Lyndon (’75). (The Wild Rovers and The Thief Who Came to Dinner, which O’Neal also made in the early ’70s, were regarded as mostly negligible and therefore didn’t count.)

O’Neal has said for decades that his career never really recovered from Barry Lyndon — Kubrick had changed the film entirely in editing, and had made him look like a clueless and opportunistic Shallow Hal of the 18th Century. Plus the film had lost money.

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When asked by Attitude magazine if Ryan Gosling‘s Ken is gay [start at 2:35 mark] and if the film is inclusive in this particular respect, Barbie star-producer Margot Robbie answers with a flabbergasting sidestep**:

“It is but they are all dolls…so they don’t actually have sexual orientations because they don’t have any organs or reproductive organs.”

Due respect, but that’s a dishonest reply. Ken is as gay as Liberace or William S. Burroughs ever were, and probably more so.

“They’re Kenning all over each other.” — Ryan Gosling.

“Ken Has Always Been Gay,” posted on 6.16.22.

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Hollywood Onramp‘s Jay Troutman (or is it Jake Troutman or Jay Cutler?) has spilled the visual beans on Oppenheimer. Sorry, fans, but it sounds like the same con as before….a wowser factor that is cool but limited.

A relatively small percentage of the viewing public will be watching Oppenheimer in a proper IMAX theatre on a massive screen. And it’s time to come clean: Like Tenet and other IMAX-shot Nolan films, only a certain portion of this upcoming film (7.21) will be projected within the boxy 1.43:1 aspect ratio.

A healthy-sized portion will be presented within a 1.9:1 or 2.2:1 aspect ratio — more or less 2:1 a la Vittorio Storaro. So all the “you absolutely must see it in true-blue IMAX!” hype is basically a shell game.

True-blue IMAX delivers a 15-perf, 70mm image with a boxy aspect ratio (i.e., 1.43:1 or a bit wider than 1.37:1, only much bigger) and a widescreen 1.9:1 or 2.2:1 aspect ratio for smaller, non-IMAX-scale screens.

“The thing is, the IMAX camera is big and loud, so it’s not great for scenes in small rooms with quiet dialogue. Sometimes [the editors] would be like ‘is there a lawnmower in this scene? Where’s the lawnmower coming from?” So Chris Nolan also used the Panavision System 65 5-perf format.”

Eric Kohn: “The bulk of Oppenheimer is men in rooms talking.”

In the shooting stage “both formats use the same film stock, but IMAX captures an image 15 perforations wide while System 65 captures an image five-perfs tall.

“In order to mix these formats together, the five-perf shots are optically blown up to 15 perf and the IMAX 15 perf shots are optically reduced in size.

“You can also see that the different formats result in different shapes, in what we call aspect ratios. The IMAX image is taller than the five-perf image. That means when you go to a proper IMAX theatre with a 1.43:1 screen, anything shot with an IMAX camera will fill the full screen while anything shot by the five-perf camera will have black bars at the top and bottom.

“If you go see the five-perf 70 millimeter print, which [Universal] marketing is calling 70 millimeter film, the image will have a 2.2:1 aspect ratio, and anything shot by the IMAX camera will have have the top and bottom cut off.

“Now you might think that would be a deal-breaker, but [Chris Nolan and his team] always had these different frames in mind. And the 2.2:1 frame is actually what Chris and editor Jennifer Lame were looking at through most of the editing process.

“We had both 2.2 and 1.43 footage in our AVID timelines so they could watch both to make sure everything was working, but the main aspect ratio we worked in was 2.2.”