The anti-Kidman, pro-Messing mob is getting more and more strident. Kidding…we’re probably just talking about 40 or 50 Twitter soreheads, and possibly fewer. The complaints will mostly vaporize when Aaron Sorkin‘s Being The Ricardos comes out…what, later this year?

In a 2014 Fade-In interview with the late F.X. Feeney, Nebraska director Alexander Payne said the following:

“Some studio people asked me out to lunch a couple of months ago, and they said, ‘Look, if we let you run the studio, what changes would you make?’ I said, ‘Well, thanks for asking. I believe in the $25 to $45 million adult comedy and adult drama. Why does everything now adult have to be absolutely shrink-wrapped and be robbed of the production value it could have? Where is Trading Places today? Where is Groundhog Day today? Intelligent summer comedies. Where are the intelligent ones?’ Then the studio guy said, ‘Well $45 million…I think I might disagree with your price point.’ I said, ‘You might, but where is Out of Africa today? Why don’t we have films like that?”

Payne wasn’t crazy to ask this. Others felt the same way. The middle-class Spotlight came out the following year (2015) and Manchester By The Sea happened in 2016. But look at how things are now. Good God. It’s just noteworthy, I think, that Payne’s viewpoint seemed entirely legit and reasonable and not in the least bit eccentric only seven years ago.

I’ve never seen and will almost certainly never see Steel Magnolias start to finish. Ditto Beaches. That’s all I can think of right now. There are dozens that aren’t coming to mind. My brain engine won’t turn over.

I once worked with a woman who had never seen Heat. When asked why, she said, "Because every man I've ever worked with has all but DEMANDED I watch it. My life is just fine without it." Me, I've never seen Scarface. Prolly not gonna. What's your "never seen/won't see" classic? pic.twitter.com/ELfL9EDbGG

— Tolkien Negro (@marcbernardin) April 29, 2021

Earlier Joe Rogan: “Are you a healthy person? Like, look, don’t do anything stupid, but you should take care of yourself. You should…if you’re a healthy person, and you’re exercising all the time and you’re young and you’re eating well, like, I don’t think you need to worry about this.”

HE to Earlier Rogan: “You know some younger people who eat well? Most of the younger people I’ve known eat crap and carbohydrates and drink a whole lot. People generally don’t start eating well until they get into their 30s and 40s.”

Today’s [4.29) Rogan: “I’m not an anti-vax person…in fact I said I believe they’re safe. I encourage many people to take them. My parents were vaccinated. I just said that I don’t think that if you’re a young healthy person, that you need it. [Fauci’s] argument was you need it for other people [to avoid infecting them]. But that’s a different conversation. And yes, that makes sense.”

Extra Rogan: “I am not a doctor. I am a fucking moron. I am a cage-fighting commentator. I am not a respected source of information even for me. But I at least try to be honest about what I am saying.”

HE clarity: “Is there potential harm in getting the vaccine? No. Is there potential harm in not getting the vaccine? Yes. End of discussion.”

Sidenote: Thank God Rogan’s ditched that atrocious red-tanning-bed studio design.

Viewers considering the merits of Chamber of Horrors (’66) were probably given pause by the fact that the director’s first name was “Hy” — short for Hyman. “Hy” is not the name of a director of a horror film — it’s (a) the host of a benefit variety show, (b) a guy you might play golf with, (c) a guy who owns a Palm Springs restaurant-bar or (d) runs a San Francisco comedy club.

Hy’s full name was Hyman Jack Averback. He was a fairly successful radio, TV and film actor who directed a lot of TV shows, and who co-produced F Troop.

Chamber of Horrors was originally shot as a feature-length pilot for a proposed series called House of Wax. It was considered too intense for the tube, so Warner Bros. marketers dreamt up the “fear flasher” and “horror horn” gimmicks. Shot at Warner Bros. studios in Burbank (Tony Curtis performed an uncredited cameo), it opened on 10.21.66.

The narrator of the trailer is William Conrad.

Last weekend I posted a pick-up piece that was based upon a 4.23 piece by Vulcan Reporter containing what I’m told was mistaken reporting.

The article ended with the following: “While Warner Bros is not abandoning home video media completely, the amount of Warner Bros films and shows that will be getting physical media releases will be going down as the idea is to develop more interest in HBO Max.”

A knowledgable source says that the story was based upon “an improper or misunderstood comment from Jerry Beck to someone who had left their fact checker in their sock drawer.

“No one from Warner Archive said anything. [Beck] knew some release info that was not to be discussed, and mentioned it in an interview. That info was taken totally out of context, and then put in an article by a journalist without a clue.

“The studio isn’t the problem. The pick-up piece you ran on 4.24 was neither true nor accurate.”

If you have a liking for “hang-out” films, consider a view that Fred Zinnemann‘s The Sundowners (’60), which isn’t even available via HD streaming, is one of the better ones.

Nicely shot by Jack Hildyard (The Bridge on the River Kwai) and running 141 minutes, it’s about a family of itinerant Australian sheep drovers (Robert Mitchum, Deborah Kerr, Peter Ustinov, Michael Anderson, Jr.) driving a large herd to market.

It’s a hang-out film because it’s leisurely, laid-back and pretty much plotless — it just ambles along from one episode to another. Okay, there’s a third-act focus on possibly buying a home and settling down, but there’s never much urgency about this.

In hang-out films dramatic conflicts, second-act pivots and third-act crescendos barely poke through and are otherwise subordinate to the ebb and flow of relationships between the main characters. A focus on mood, flavor, attitude and atmosphere (be it laid-back or existential).

In the latter sense you could almost call Michelangelo Antonioni‘s L’Avventura (’60), L’Eclisse (’62) and La Notte (’63) hang-out films.

One of my personal faves is Jim Jarmusch‘s Only Lovers Left Alive — actually half of a hang-out film and half of a “distressed bohemian” interior-design trip.

In 2014 Quentin Tarantino was quoted saying that Howard Hawks‘ Rio Bravo (’59) was his favorite hang-out movie.

Five years later his own Once Upon A Time in Hollywood mirrored Rio Bravo‘s aesthetic.

The 1930s-era film that David O. Russell has been shooting since early this year and which stars Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington (and costars Rami Malek, Zoe Saldana, Robert De Niro, Mike Myers, Timothy Olyphant, Michael Shannon, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy. Andrea Riseborough, Matthias Schoenaerts and Alessandro Nivola) allegedly has a firm title — Canterbury Glass.

I don’t believe it — a $250 million period ensemble piece (“a doctor and a lawyer form an unlikely partnership”) with a title that sounds like a high-toned PBS historical drama or documentary?

In their man-on-the-street geography quiz interviews Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel have shown that average Millennials and Zoomers are cretins when it comes to identifying continents and countries, much less regions and cities, and that maybe 1 out 500 might know that the title refers to the medieval stained glass windows (between 800 and 900 years old) in Canterbury Cathedral, and that the allusion is to something aged, fragile and extremely valuable.

With a notoriously uneducated and incurious populace, presenting a super-expensive caper film titled Canterbury Glass is like saying “we know you guys don’t know or care what the title means and we don’t care if you do or don’t…we’re calling it this in order to goad and confound you, and to make sure you understand that the people who made this film live in their own aesthetic and cultural membrane, and that they’d rather please themselves than reach out to you with a title that adds up in a way you might understand or relate to.”

IMDB Pro page capture:

In May 1941, the great Otis Ferguson was half-and-half on Citizen Kane — down on his knees for the genius-level landmark stuff (especially Gregg Toland‘s cinematography) but irked by “talk and more talk,’ or what he regarded as such.

Ferguson excerpt: “I believe we can look at the picture, and of course have been told to wait for that. The picture. The new art. The camera unbound. The picture is very exciting to anyone who gets excited about how things can be done in the movies; and the many places where it takes off like the Wright brothers should be credited to Welles first and his cameraman second (Herman J. Mankiewicz as writing collaborator should come in too).

“The Kubla Khan setting, the electioneering stage, the end of the rough-cut in the Marsh of Thyme projection room, the kid outside the window in the legacy scene, the opera stage, the dramatics of the review copy on opening night…the whole idea of a man in these attitudes must be credited to Welles himself.

“And in these things there is no doubt the picture is dramatic. But what goes on between the dramatic high points, the story? No. What goes on is talk and more talk. And while the stage may stand for this, the movies don’t. And where a cameraman like Gregg Toland can be every sort of help to a director, in showing him what will pick up, in getting this effect or that, in achieving some lifting trick the guy has thought up, the cameraman still can’t teach him how shoot and cut a picture, even if he knows how himself. It is a thing that takes years and practice to learn.

“And its main problem always is story, story, story — or, How can we do it to them so they don’t know beforehand that it’s being done? Low-key photography won’t help, except in the case of critics. Crane shots and pan shots, funny angles like showing the guy as though you were lying down at his feet, or moving in over him on the wings of an angel, won’t help. Partial lighting won’t help, or even blacking out a face or figure won’t help, though it may keep people puzzled. Tricks and symbols never really [amount] to much.

A reposting of a 7.30.18 recollection of HE’s “Great Woody Allen Comes To The Rescue of Shane” episode, which happened in early to mid April of 2013:

Five and one-third years ago Woody Allen saved George Stevens‘ Shane from an aspect-ratio slicing that would have rocked the classic cinema universe and resulted in a great hue and cry from the Movie Godz. When all is said and done and the Chalamets of the world have all been put to bed, this is one of the events that will burnish and solidify Allen’s legacy.

On 3.16.13 I revealed that George Stevens, Jr. and Warner Home Entertaiment restoration guy Ned Price were intending to release a Bluray of the classic 1953 western using a 1.66:1 aspect ratio, which would have cleavered the tops and bottoms of the original 1.37 photography by dp Loyal Griggs. I howled and screamed in my usual way, but nothing seemed to change until Allen, the only top-dog, world-class director to step into this fray, shared his opinion on 4.4.13.

On 3.29 I appealed for help from Martin Scorsese in an open letter. On 4.4 I posted the Allen letter. 13 days later Joseph McBride’s letter to Stevens, Jr., deploring WHE’s intention to present the film within a 1.66 a.r., was posted.

Later that day Price threw in the towel and announced that WHE’s Shane Bluray would be released in the original 1.37 aspect ratio. I’ve long believed that Allen’s opinion was the crucial factor in rectifying this situation.

…and take a nice friendly pass on Physical, a half-hour Apple series set to debut on 6.18? It’s apparently just another self-empowerment saga aimed at women of a certain age, set in the ’80s and starring Rose Byrne, etc.

I’m only saying that the trailer for Perfect (’85) persuades that despite being one of James Bridges‘ lesser efforts, it’s clearly a smarter, sharper, more handsomely produced A-level film than Physical ever dreamt of being. Obviously — you can tell immediately.

(A year earlier Bridges’ Mike’s Murder, a Los Angeles-based love story-slash-drug murder film with a lead performance from Debra Winger that becomes more poignant every time I re-watch it, received a bungled, half-hearted release from Warner Bros.)

I saw Perfect once 36 years ago, and I don’t recall anyone gasping or doing handstands or backflips. I shrugged it off, never gave it a second think. But I’d much rather sit through it again than watch Byrne reinvent herself as a celebrity gymnast while working out to “Video Killed The Radio Star.”

…that the odds of this kind of emotionally galvanizing moment at the Oscars are not only dropping by the day but (be honest) will probably happen more and more infrequently if at all, in part because the ranks of charismatic home-run “brand” hitters like Jack Nicholson are thinning out. Will you listen to that crowd and feel those vibes? Will you consider that skipping across the stage? It didn’t seem like some stupendous emotional moment when it happened 23 years ago, but post-Soderbergh death knell it sure feels like one now.