The late Sydney Pollack was so earnest and articulate, never brusque or indifferent. This is familiar territory, but worth re-watching.
From “Stanley Was Slippin’,” posted a week or so after the death of Stanley Kubrick on 3.7.99, or was it after the July 1999 release of Eyes Wide Shut? I honestly can’t remember.
“Stanley Kubrick’s films were always impressively detailed and beautifully realized. They’ve always imposed a certain trance-like spell — an altogetherness and aesthetic unity common to the work of any major artist.
“What Kubrick chose to create is not being questioned here. On their own terms, his films are masterful. But choosing to isolate yourself from the unruly push-pull of life can have a calcifying effect.
“Kubrick was less Olympian and more loosey-goosey when he made his early films in the `50s (Fear and Desire, The Killing, Paths of Glory) and early `60s (Lolita, Dr. Strangelove). I’m not saying his ultra-arty period that began with 2001: A Space Odyssey and continued until his death with A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut, resulted in lesser films. The opposite is probably true.
“I’m saying that however beautiful and mesmerizing they were on their own terms, these last six films of Kubrick’s were more and more unto themselves, lacking that reflective, straight-from-the-hurlyburly quality that makes any work of expression seem more vital and alive.
This morning Kino Lorber announced a new Bluray of Mark Robson‘s The Bridges at Toko Ri (’54); ditto a forthcoming 4K Bluray of John Frankenheimer‘s The Manchurian Candidate (’62). I immediately wrote KL’s Frank Tarzi, who became a true HE hero nine years ago after releasing a boxy (1.37:1) Bluray of Delbert Mann‘s Marty, and asked him what the aspect ratios would be.
Tarzi’s reply broke my heart.
Despite a wonderfully boxy, extremely handsome version of Toko Ri having streamed on Vudu for several years, Kino Lorber’s forthcoming Bluray will be presented at the dreaded 1.85. Hearing this was like getting stabbed in the chest with a ballpoint pen. As one who greatly respected Tarzi’s decision to release that boxy Marty Bluray, I was naturally hoping that KL’s Toko Ri Bluray would be issued at 1.37 or at the very least 1.66. Aaagghh!
Tarzi: “KL’s Bridges at Toko Ri, The Manchurian Candidate, 12 Angry Men and Night of the Hunter are all presented at 1.85:1. That’s how they played in theaters. We have the needed documentations for all.
“As far as Juggernaut is concerned, the master is the same 1.85 master we had previously released. The packaging had said 1.66, but that was a typo. It’s the same transfer but encoded at a higher bit rate and on a dual-layered BD50 disc, giving the feature 30mbps or more. So it should look better than the previous release that was on a BD25 single layered disc. We also added a TV Spot.”
HE reply: “Frank, you’ve broken my heart. 12 Angry Men was shown at 1.85 in theatres on ‘57, you say? So the Criterion guys who cropped it at 1.66 are improvising or irresponsible?
“Manchurian began its home video life with a 1.66:1 aspect ratio. Then Criterion whacked it down to 1.75. Now Kino has chopped it down further to 1.85. Terrific.
“Toko Ri is drop-dead beautiful at 1.37. You’ve decided to eliminate…what, 30% or 35% of that 1.37 image?
“What can I say, Frank? I thought you were a bro, at least as far as that 1.37 Marty Bluray was concerned. Now, it appears, you’ve gone over to the dark side. You’ve apparently been Bob Furmanek’ed.
“It really doesn’t matter what aspect ratio panicked theatrical distributors went with in 1954 or ‘57. All that matters is how good and true the film looks by today’s whatever-works standard. We can choose any aspect ratio that seems right and pleasing to our eyes, as you did with Marty.
“It is my conviction that Bob Furmanek is a sworn enemy of HE’s concept of pictorial big-screen beauty. He only cares about what distribs we’re scared of…about uncovering historical documentation that shows they were projecting with 1.85 aperture plates.
“Loyal Griggs’ Toko Ri cinematography was clearly framed or protected for 1.37. Paramount was a 1.66:1 studio in ‘54, as you know. If you had to whack it down, you could have at least held yourself to 1.66. But cropping it to 1.85 is unconscionable.”
Okay, not "heartbroken" but kinda sorry. FOMO'ed. I never really thought there was anything especially irksome or substandard about the 2015 Bluray version, but I love the idea of watching a richer, more vibrant version inside the big Chinese and basking in the whole Hollywood lore of it all (Steven Spielberg, Paul Thomas Anderson, Angie Dickinson).
Login with Patreon to view this post
It’s great that Mitchell is singing and playing guitar and sounding pretty good, particularly in the wake of having suffered a brain aneurysm in late March of 2015. She was in fairly bad shape after that tragedy, but she’s recovered (or at least is recovering) to a significant degree, and praise be to God for this.
The key question to me is “is Joni still smoking?” Because that’s almost certainly what helped to bring about her aneurysm. She initially lost her ability to speak and walk, and still needs a little help getting around as we speak.
I was so concerned about Mitchell’s well-being in the wake of the aneurysm that I once hand-delivered an admonishing fan letter to her Spanish home in Bel Air. I insisted I was one of her biggest fans and begged her to think about vaping instead of sticking with tobacco.
Mitchell may have decided that life isn’t worth living without the pleasure of unfiltered cigarettes, but maybe not. She once said in an interview that she began smoking at age 9 or 10 or something. At a certain point the body just can’t take the nicotine and the toxins and complications will manifest.
It’s wonderful, in any event, that Mitchell has regained (or is in the process of regaining) her singing and guitar-playing abilities. She’ll turn 80 on 11.7.23.
Posted on 3.31.15: I attended a short, smallish concert that Mitchell gave at Studio 54 in October ’82 to promote “Wild Things Run Fast.” The crowd was not huge, maybe 150 or so, and I was standing fairly close and pretty much dead center. No female artist has ever touched me like Mitchell**, and I was quite excited about being this close to her.
I was beaming, starry-eyed and staring at her like the most self-abasing suck-up fan you could imagine, and during the first song her eyes locked onto mine and I swear to God we began to kind of half-stare at each other. (Some performers do this, deciding to sing for this or that special person in the crowd.) Her eyes danced around from time to time but she kept coming back to me, and I remember thinking, “Okay, she senses that I love her and she probably likes my looks so I guess I’m her special fanboy or something for the next few minutes.”
Mitchell was dressed in a white pants suit and some kind of colorful scarf, and she sang and played really well, and I remember she had a little bit of a sexy tummy thing going on. Sorry but that had a portion of my attention along with the songs and “being there” and a feeling that I’d remember this moment for decades to come.
If your wife/partner/lover is a writer and you’re in the difficult if not impossible position of (a) not admiring her writing all that much but (b) unable to share your honest opinion for obvious reasons…what the hell do you do? I’ll tell you what you do. Never share your honest opinion with her or anyone else…ever. Never write it down, never record it…observe Moscow rules.
That doesn’t just mean “keep it hidden until you die”; it means “keep it hidden eternally.” It’s the only way to go. Life with a wife/partner/lover is hard enough; naked honesty will just send the relationship into a ditch.
From Owen Gleiberman’s 1.22.23 Sundance review of Nicole Holofcener’s You Hurt My Feelings: “For close to half an hour, we have no idea where You Hurt My Feelings is going, and we don’t care. We’re happy just to spend time watching Nicole Holofcener’s people reveal themselves with an alternating current of savagery and vulnerability. But then, out of the blue, the film coalesces into a situation.
“At the Paragon Sports store near Union Square, Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and her sister (Michaela Watkins) happen to walk in and see that Beth’s husband Don (Tobias Menzies) is there buying socks with Mark (Arian Moayed), his brother-in-law. They approach but stop short when they overhear what the two men are talking about. It’s Beth’s new novel. Don confesses that he didn’t actually like it. But he read so many drafts, and felt so committed to being encouraging, that he couldn’t bring himself to tell Beth what he really thought. Now he’s stuck in a lie he can’t get out of.
“This is not a matter of overpraising someone’s pot roast. Beth’s writing is part of her identity, her core. That Don didn’t like her book — and deceived her about it — cuts her to the quick. It’s almost as if he was being unfaithful, a point the film underscores by having Beth rush out of the store and come close to throwing up in the middle of a New York street, deliberately evoking Jill Clayburgh’s meltdown in An Unmarried Woman.
Could Spike Jonze’s Adaptation (’02), which stars a balding, overweight, Uriah Heep-like Nicolas Cage as a bizarrely fictionalized version of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, be made today? I saw it again a few nights ago (4K Bluray), and yeah, it’s possible it could be made today, sure. But some characters would have to be un-whited as the film, shockingly and almost incomprehensibly, doesn’t have a single African American or Asian American face….eeeeeeee!!!! And Ron Livingston‘s Marty Bowen, Kaufman’s agent, wouldn’t be allowed to say that he fucked this or that girl in the ass.
22 years ago I reviewed Kaufman’s Adaptation script and called it ‘one of the most inventive and out-there scripts I’ve ever read.’ The main character, I explained, “is Kaufman himself, and that’s a big whoa right there. A screenplay about a screenwriter trying to write the screenplay? But it’s much more than that.
The ‘subject’ of Adaptation is an actual, one-time orchid-worshipper named John LaRoche (Chris Cooper), whose attempted theft of rare flora from a Florida state preserve eight years ago resulted in his being prosecuted by the state and, from that, a New Yorker profile of LaRoche and then a book called “The Orchid Thief” (Ballantine), by staff writer Susan Orlean (so named in the film and played by Meryl Streep).
Adaptation is primarily about Kaufman’s struggle to adapt “The Orchid Thief” into script form, but it’s also about LaRoche and Orlean and the importance of nurturing a devotion in life to something perfect and beautiful. It’s about the striving of mortals to merge themselves with the sublime — Kaufman in his way, LaRoche and Orlean in theirs. Like the screenplay, the movie is half about Kaufman’s situation and half about LaRoche and Orlean’s. But it begins and ends inside Kaufman’s head.
Friendo of friendo with HE edits and add-ons: “Worst-ever year for movies produces worst-ever Oscar results, although it’s not as if they didn’t have better options to vote for.
“After years of spreading their awards around, the Academy has showered a piece of multiverse Marvel mulch with seven (7) Oscars…the membership changes of recent years are also now showing a different motivation among the members. Fraser, Yeoh, Curtis and even Ke Huy Quan are all the beneficiaries of DEI sentimentality and general emotional cappuccino froth over real coffee and perceptive judgment.”
HE hat-tip for “conkirk” epitaph (with minor edits): “The more I think about it, the more I laugh. Top Gun: Maverick was really normie heaven, and represented everything that made most people feel good about movies. The oldsters loved the genteel (except for the bloody finger stubs) and traditional Banshees. The younger generation loves Elvis. (Rght?) Cineastes are obsessed with Tar, and plebs anxious about World War 3 are gripped by All Quiet on Western Front.
“So the rubes tune in and watch their favorite films lose as they listen to some director extolling the virtues of drag shows for children, and all of their suspicions about Hollywood and the Oscars were confirmed. This was the last straw for normies and mainstream audiences, I suspect. They will completely give up.
As someone said, this is not an event with any relationship to us, or even worthy of attention anymore. It exists in its own realm, for an insular, shrinking group. The ratings in future years will stay in the cellar region, as award shows get smaller and smaller.”
11:43pm: It’s been suggested that instead of reporting the truth (i.e., internet outage) that I say I turned off the Oscars 20 minutes before they ended in a state of anger and disgust. Which I didn’t do, although it kinda sounds good. All is lost. Nothing but pain, lethargy, despair and all of that good downer stuff. Academy voters are the Bubble People — the actual reality of things, the real state of cinema and how real-world people regard it, is a whole ‘nother thing.
11:26pm: Strange as this may seem, the cable has blanked out and I have nothing but Twitter and the trades to rely upon for news of the final Oscar outcome. But a filmmaker friend has just written me: “The death of cinema.” The EEAAO baddies have stormed the Bastille. “Because I used to love her, but it’s all over now.” Identity, narrative, sentiment. Except for All Quiet on the Western Front, true quality took a back seat.
10:55 pm: M. M. Keeravani, RRR‘s music composer (otherwise known to rubes as the bald, fat, bearded, happy guy) singing the Carpenters’ “Top of the World” as part of his acceptance speech for the Best Song Oscar…a very special moment. I mean this. I felt glad for him, for everyone.
10:46 pm: “Anyone who wants Robert Blake to be included in the ‘In Memoriam’ segment, text your assent.” Or words to that effect.
10:38 pm: The Daniels (Kwan, Scheinert) have won Best Original Screenplay for EEAAO. Bad sign, dark omen, clouds forming. And Women Talking wins for Best Adapted Screenplay — predicted and presumed by nearly everyone. Friendo: “With EEAAO winning Best Original Screenplay, I’m afraid it’s over, Jeff. FUCK FUCK FUCK…Martin McDonaugh should’ve won for Best Original.”
10:25 pm: The Cocaine Bear promotion (two appearances) is very strange considering that the film is utterly silly….a low-grade exploitation film if I ever saw one. And it gets a big friendly push from the Oscars, allegedly a celebration of movie excellence?
10:14 pm: Friendo: “All Quiet winning yet another tech Oscar is a good sign. If it wins Best Adapted Screenplay, it could win Best Picture.”
10:08 pm: All Quiet wins the Best Production Design Oscar.
9:59 pm: Lady Gaga (zero makeup, torn jeans) singing the nominated Top Gun: Maverick song was the second best moment of the telecast.
9:54 pm: The show is now two hours old, and here’s the one thing I haven’t yet posted: “The makeup / Best Actor Oscars often go together, so Brendan Fraser takes the Best Actor Oscar.”
9:41 pm: As expected, Edward Berger‘s All Quiet on the Western Front takes Best Int’l Feature Oscar. Fine, deserved…but I would’ve voted for Lukas Dhont‘s Close.
9:34 pm: Hands down, the RRR musical dance number (“Naatu Naatu”) was the single best moment of the show so far.
9:27 pm: Best Costume Oscar goes to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever? Really? Why?
9:18 pm: Brendan Fraser‘s fat suit wins the Best Makeup Oscar. First-rate work, deeply unpleasant to contemplate.
9:05 pm: All Quiet on the Western Front wins Best Cinematography Oscar. Good call. No issues. Well deserved.
8:35 pm: EEAAO‘s Jamie Lee Curtis wins for Best Supporting Actress? Congrats, I guess, but this, for me, is the worst possible outcome in this category. JLC was overbearing and over-everything in EEAAO, and for me no fun at all. Loud, broad, bold caps. I get it, I get it…this is a career tribute award, but she hasn’t been in a decent film in decades…not since True Lies. This award has nothing to do with quality of performance. Nothing to do wit “standards,” as most people understand and respect them.
8:30 pm: EEAAO‘s Ke Huy Quan wins Best Supporting Actor…huge non-surprise. Congrats but calm down, dude…stop crying…you knew this was locked for several weeks. Everyone did.
8:10 pm: Excellent Nicole Kidman held hostage by AMC joke, Jimmy. James Cameron, “the Avatar guy who hasn’t been mominated for a Best Director Oscar” or words to that effect….what do they think he is, a woman?” Great Will Smith vs. crisis team joke!
5:15 Pacific: Said it earlier; repeating for emphasis — Hollywood Elsewhere wants (a) the Everything Everywhere All At Once wins kept to a minimum and (b) at least one HE fave (Kerry Condon, say) to win in their category.
Otherwise this is going to be a bit of a misery slog for me, and for people burdened with classic taste in movies. (We are legion!) The show hasn’t even begun and I’m already drowning in weltschmerz. For me the happiest Oscar show was 20 years ago when Roman Polanski‘s The Pianist starting whipping Chicago‘s ass. Tonight is going to be mostly awful for me…just awful. What do you want me to do, lie?
For the last eight years Gone With The Wind, one of the most financially successful Hollywood epics of all time as well as a moving parable about survival in hard times, has been on the liberal shit list -- officially shunned, regretted and derided by film festivals, the Academy's Apology Museum, HBO Max, etc. All to placate the African-American community and their justified resentment of the film's antiquated racial attitudes.
Login with Patreon to view this post
Last night "Correcting Jeff," one of the more dickish and obnoxious HE comment hounds, stated that "cinema died years ago, yet Oscar bloggers fight on like Japanese soldiers hiding in caves."
Login with Patreon to view this post
You can never trust trailers but my God, the new Renfield trailer looks magnificent! Could the film itself be as good? Could this be the definitive vampire comedy that will unseat Love at First Bite and present one of Nicolas Cage‘s greatest-all-time performances?
If the film turns out as good as the trailer I’m seriously in favor of Cage being Oscar-nominated for Best Actor…trhe campaign would become a career tribute thing, and he could win. Look at him, for God’s sake! Listen to that enunciation! The crescendo of his career!
Directed by Chris McKay and written by Ryan Ridley (based on an story by Robert Kirkman), Renfield is about a toxic, dysfunctional relationship between Renfield, the apprentice vampire played by Dwight Frye in Tod Browning‘s original 1931 Dracula and played in Renfield by Nicholas Hoult. Awkwafina plays Renfield’s traffic-cop girlfriend.
Universal will open Renfield on 4.14.23. Possibly the first excellent film of 2023!