…for director Sean Baker, especially with too-hip-for-the-room critics like Bob Strauss, Tomris Laffly and TimGrierson singing praise for the morally revolting RedRocket…everything was coming up roses for the guy when all of a sudden and out of the fucking blue, Baker “liked” a Tulsi Gabbard tweet about how the Rittenhouse Jury “got it right” by finding the 18-year-old shooter not guilty on all counts.
In the blink of an eye Baker had put himself into social jeopardy, or so it seemed. By implying he was something of a rightie or was certainly no “seig heil” Democrat, he was theoretically on the outs with your devotional film industry wokesters….”Eeeeeeee!!! Sean’s on the side of a gun-toting, demonstrator-killing, Proud Boy-fraternizing racist!!” The squealing could be heard all over town.
Houston, we have a problem with Criterion’s new Citizen Kane package, which includes a 4K UHD version as well as an alternate Bluray version.
The problem is not with the 4K disc, which reportedly looks quite fine and delightful. The problem is with the Bluray version, which looks fine until the 30-minute mark, at which point the image turns all gray and milky with the black levels and sharpness totally out the window.
This bizarre Criterion screw-up was first reported two or three days ago by DVD Beaver‘s Gary W. Tooze. Tooze’s screen captures were pointed out this morning by HE friendo Mark Smith. The problem was subsequently confirmed an hour or two later by a totally trusted technical authority on Bluray and 4K discs.
So this is real — not a rumor. Criterion has totally dropped the pitcher of milk and now it’s all over the floor. The 4K is cool, as noted, but the Bluray is a cock-up of epic proportions — perhaps the worst in Criterion’s history. And so Criterion will have to recall the package and fix the problem and send the corrected version out sometime in December or whenever.
Okay, I’m being presumptuous. It’s theoretically possible that Criterion might not recall the Kane package. They might just say to their customers “you guys don’t really care about the Bluray disc…right? This package is all about the lustrous 4K version so let’s just push the Bluray problem aside and forget about it. You don’t care, we don’t care…right? We fuck up every now and then and you’ve been cool with that. The DePalma thing…remember that one? You let us slide on those ridiculous teal-tinted Blurays of Midnight Cowboy and Bull Durham and Teorema. So why not just turn the other cheek on this thing as well?”
Tooze: “The 1080p looks quite strong, superior to Warner’s 2011 Blu-ray in varying degrees, often darker, showing more grain and richer contrast layering. It’s a dual-layered rendering with a max’ed out bitrate with nothing else sharing that first Blu-ray disc.
“Until we get almost exactly 30 minutes into the film — just prior to the scene in Bernstein’s office (with the contentious visibility of the rain on the windows) — [when] the Criterion Bluray alters and shows a very softer, paler, contrast [and] the brightness is diminished.
“I don’t have any explanation for this [grayish milky transition] on the Bluray…[but it is certainly] different from the first 1/2 hour of the film.”
The problem is made obvious in many of Tooze’s screen captures — here’s a sampling provided by Smith:
Imagine that you're the unquestioned ruler and Godfather of the Democratic party, and that you have absolute power as far as messaging is concerned. What would you do to save the party from electoral disaster next November? Given a general perception among your non-college-educated voters that Democrats (a) aren't too fond of European descendants (i.e., palefaces), (b) feel a much greater allegiance with those who trashed cities after George Floyd's murder in late May of 2020 than with regular schlubs, and (c) are overly beholden to the wokester nutters and the "teach CRT to grade-school kids and explain how evil white people are" crowd.
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Yesterday a Facebook friend chose to process the Kyle Rittenhouse “not guilty” verdict through a racial lens, using the whole tragic episode as an opportunity to lament racially-stacked decks and dump on the general venality of white people. I replied as follows…
“Agreed — if Rittenhouse had been black, the cops probably would have shot him. Then again why would a black dude want to use a loaded weapon against rampaging white leftists? Speaking as a small business owner, my heart went out to retail storefront owners whose businesses were trashed in May and June 2020 because of George Floyd’s murder.
“The Tulsa race riots — a deplorable, shameful chapter in this country’s history — happened almost a century ago. Most of us understand that our culture has progressed since then. This is a significantly different country than it was even in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
“If you want to be completely condemning and dismissive of white people, you can say ‘nothing has changed…they were largely racist and evil then, and they’re pretty much driven by the same white supremacist attitudes today.’ If you want to insist on that viewpoint today, have at it.
“Trump voters are obviously or largely still living in the past (say, the 1950s) but, the racist Charlottesville marchers of 2017 aside, even they wouldn’t be part of a homicidal race riot today. Either you accept that society has the capacity to adapt and evolve, or you don’t.
“The fact is that wokesters have overplayed their hand over the last four or five years, and the recent defeat of Terry McAuliffe in Virginia is probably a good forecast of what will happen a year from now. Outside of Trump loyalists and QAnon loonies, most people, I believe, are basically sensible and decent and will support sensible liberal policies. But they largely hate the radical wokester left, and I for one understand why.
“Wokesters are the new McCarthy-ites — scolders, social-media blacklisters and reverse racists. Thanks to the militant left and proponents of CRT in grade schools, the term ‘older white American male’ is now an epithet. And now the chickens, trust me, are coming home to roost. Congrats.”
Clark Gable drank and smoked himself to death. Three packs a day, according to someaccounts. Plus cigars and pipes. Reportedly a binge drinker. His age (59) had relatively little to do with anything. He bought it.
AnthonyLane’s NewYorkerreview of Jane Campion’s ThePoweroftheDog explains why Campion may win the Best Director Oscar (for crafting an intense backwater realm and going whole-hog on the perversity), but why it has almost no chance as a Best Picture contender. Nobody will want to celebrate how this grim and odorous parlor drama makes them feel — they just won’t.
In an otherwise perfectly edited sequence in American Graffiti ('73), director and co-writer George Lucas got one tiny thing wrong. Dragging a cable line with a hook, Richard Dreyfuss attempts to attach the cable to the rear axle of an idling cop car. So far, so good. But all the cop behind the wheel had to do was glance into the side rearview mirror at the wrong time and Dreyfuss would've been toast. He needed to approach from a blind spot.
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And not with a loaded gun pointed at my head either. I would really, truly, honestly rather jump into a pit of hungry, soaking alligators than watch this film. Okay, that’s not true — I would choose watching over being torn to shreds by reptiles. And I would rather see it than get shot in the head. That aside…
You can’t leave your morality in the parking lot when you visit the megaplex. It’s a crucial part of who and what we are, of course, and surely a determining factor in how we react to amoral or immoral characters on the screen.
Obviously some bad guys can be charming or at least fascinating. I could post a long list of bad-guy protagonists who qualify — Kirk Douglas‘s Midge Kelly (Champion), Douglas’s Jonathan Shields (The Bad and the Beautiful), Anthony Quinn‘s Zampano (La Strada), Marlon Brando‘s Sir William Walker (Burn!), Rip Torn‘s Maury Dann (Payday), James Gandolfini‘s Tony Soprano, etc.
But every now and then you run into a scuzzy lead protagonist who crosses the moral-ethical line, leaving you no choice but to say “oh, give me a break!” or “all right, that’s it…I need a shower!” Such a character is Simon Rex‘s aging porn star (“Mikey Saber”) in Sean Baker‘s Red Rocket.
Roughly six weeks ago I wrote that Red Rocket teeters on the line between mostlylegitimate film festival-smarthouse cinema and relentlessly depraved and disgusting sociopath-porn.
“It’s ‘good’ in the sense that Baker isn’t afraid to show his lead character diving into gross and reprehensible behavior; ditto most of the supporting players. We’re talking bottom-of-the-barrel Texas trash here.
Nor does Baker feel obliged to deliver some form of moral redemption for Mikey, which I respect.
Yes, Baker occasionally delivers slick chops and whatnot, and yes, Mikey has a sizable horse schlong (even when flaccid), but the scuzz factor in this film is REALLY rank. Yes, I realize that Baker isn’t out to soothe or feel-good me. I respect his integrity but the way Red Rocket makes you feel is not good in any way, shape or form.
The crowd I saw it with in Telluride left the theatre without comment. In short, they seriously hated it. Any human being who’s seen Red Rocket would understand that reaction and tread very lightly in recommending Baker’s film, if at all.
Unless you’re elite hipster critic Bob Strauss, that is, in which case you go “wheeee…one of the year’s best! Unless, of course, you can’t tolerate the lead character but if you’re really hip like me, you’ll get past that!”
HE to Strauss: Is this your new Get Out, Bob? Seriously, do you honestly think that people tell their friends and coworkers to see films about characters they may not be able to morally tolerate? You wrote “if you can tolerate the awful person he plays”….WHAT? Rex’s character is raw sewage. What kind of reprehensible scumbag would be cool with the company of this animal?
The “naked Mikey wearing a huge red donut” poster is much more audience-friendly than any stand-out aspect of the film, although I should offer side props to Susanna Son, who makes an impression as “Strawberry,” Mikey’s gullible, up-for-anything girlfriend.
