In The Company Of Glenn

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Go ahead. Pretend you don't love Princess Princess.

The films we haven't seen

Don't even talk to me if you haven't seen Peter Tscherkassky's 1999 Outer Space, above...

In the comments thread for the below post on Jess Franco, a couple of friends seem to be asking me to weigh in on Mick La Salle's San Francisco Chronicle piece, in which La Salle, the movie reviewer for the paper, admits to not having seen five putatively canonical films; chronicles his viewing of said five, To Kill a Mockingbird, Blade Runner and 2001: A Space Odyssey among them; and offers some banal and relatively unhelpful assessments of them, deeming, for instance, 2001 "impenetrable."

I can't say I am all too agitated by any of this. First off, we all have movies we haven't seen; one of the glories of being a cinephile, professional or otherwise, is that the learning curve's forever a straight line, going up. More pertinent to me is that Mr. La Salle, who apparently has some bona fides in the field of pre-code Hollywood film, has never impinged on my consciousness prior to this, and appears to come from a perspective/sensibility I have about zero interest in. Read La Salle's take on Leo McCarey's An Affair to Remember. "[N]ot quite the sappy indulgence I remember," he says, and how nice for him. Now, if you'd like, check out Dave Kehr's careful, detailed assessment of the 50th Anniversary DVD of the film in The New York Times. "An Affair to Remember evolves effortlessly, almost invisibly, from light romantic comedy to a kind of spiritual drama, as the characters cast off their public identities (they are both performers: he in the tabloids, she on nightclub stages) and approach their essences..."

Not everyone is Dave Kehr, whose incredible erudition is an organic feature of his work. That's true. But while Kehr's around and writing, what do I need La Salle for? Which isn't to say I don't understand that Dave's taste and perspective aren't for everyone, that some readers and potential film-goers are more comfortable in La Salle's sphere.

Francophilia

"Not an untalented man, by the way," Christopher Lee said of Spanish director Jess Franco when I half-mischievously brought his name up, interviewing Lee for TV Guide almost 15 years ago. Adepts know that Lee, who worked with the incredibly prolific Franco on a few projects in the late '60s/early'70s, from the appallingly inept Castle of Fu Manchu to the ambitious Count Dracula. Maestro Tim Lucas of VIdeo Watchdog avers that one can only truly understand Franco not by taking into account only his work from a certain period, or by eschewing the pornographic output of his oeuvre, or what have you—one must take into account his filmography entire. Given that it's almost up to 200 in number, that's a tall order.

I think I'm about a third of the way there, myself. And of that third, half of the films I saw were such poor quality prints that one might have a quarrel with the verb "saw." Blue Underground just helped out a bit by releasing two Franco rarities, 1982's Cecilia and 1972's Eugenie de Sade (not to be confused with Eugenie...the story of her journey into perversion, from 1969, which got Lee really cheesed off at Franco because, according to Lee, Franco hadn't clued him in on how pervy the thing was going to be). (And incidentally, there's at least one more picture with the name "Eugenie" in the title in Franco's filmo.)

I haven't looked at E. de Sade yet, but Cecilia is a very pleasant surprise, being from roughly the same period as such dreck as Macumba Sexual and Diamonds of Kilamandjaro. Of course, that's not even necessarily a fair measure. Lou Reed once said, "My week beat your year;" in terms of productivity, Franco's year beats most directors' careers. It's one of those sexual-liberation-of-an-aristocratic-wife tales that gained such currency after Emmanuelle, suffused with the surreal sleaze that sets Franco distinctly apart from your average Euro-hack. Here are a few frames, the latter two featuring Franco muse, star, and companion Lina Romay, who sports one of her least flattering hairstyles (or is it a wig?) here.

Storaro and widescreen

Frame within a frame: a 2.35 image from Bird With The Crystal Plumage, 1970; directed by Dario Argento, shot by Vittorio Storaro

My sanguine assessment of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro's reframing of The Last Emperor, for Criterion's Storaro-and-director-Bernardo-Bertolucci-approved DVD set, is not universally shared—no, far from it. In fact, there's a pretty hairy exchange about it going on at Home Theater Forum, which I recommend only if you've got about 12 hours on your hands. Start here. Many of the postings are on the heated side, and I don't truck with a lot of the speculation concerning Storaro's motives, eye, and sanity, but other arguments against the 2.0 aspect ratio—the salient feature of Storaro's cherished Univisium idea—are hard to shrug off. Among them the one about how if Storaro made Apocalypse Now before he had his 2.0 epiphany, how come he still sees fit to reframe it in 2.0? Truth to tell, accounts of what's visually troubling about the current state of Apocalypse on video are more disquieting than anything I actually saw in the reframing of Emperor.

I got an e-mail about all this from my old friend Joseph Failla, once a contributor to Premiere-the-magazine's Home Guide.

"The Last Emperor"'s new dimensions

Everyone's so excited about today's Criterion release of Pierrot Le Fou (which I got into earlier in the month, here, here and here) that scant attention is being paid to the other big Criterion release, a four-disc version of Bertolucci's 1997 1987 The Last Emperor, a film some see as an intimate, peculiarly poetic epic, and others see as Bertolucci's first really big capitulation to middlebrow bourgeois taste.

I'm in the former camp myself. In any case, the controversy over this version is not content-related, but formal. The film is not presented here in its theatrical aspect ratio of between 2.35:1 and 2.20.1—this discrepancy being the difference between 35mm and 70mm presentations—but at a ratio of 2.0:1. As Criterion head Peter Becker explains on Criterion's blog, this is the express wish of the cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, and as far as Bertolucci's concerned, what Storaro says goes—this is both a director and cinematographer approved version, as Storaro supervised the transfer.

So what's the deal? It's not exactly new—for the Apocalypse Now DVD of a few years back, Storaro, again with the assent of that film's director Francis Ford Coppola, gave the film the 2.0 treatment. Back in 1998, Storaro came up with this idea for a universal film ratio—2.0, that is—that went hand-in-hand with a three-perforation-per-frame film format and specs that are more compatible with high-definition video than heretofore were possible. Wikipedia has a cogent and reliable-feeling account of the scheme here.

Ecumenicism's always great in theory; on the other hand, Esperanto. Still, this is Storaro we're talking about—his technical bonafides are untouchable, and his premises are far from outlandish. And as far as the look of this 2.0 Emperor, well, on the commentary Bertolucci mentions that the most important thing to him in a shot is the character's relation to his or her space; Storaro's frame preserves the integrity of these relations, to my eye at least, beautifully. And of course the whole damn package here is beautiful, as I'm sure does not surprise you.

The morning after.

I should say pardon my gush, because looking over my Oscar live-blogging last night, I was a lot more excited than many of my fellow scribblers. I see James Wolcott deploring the "trivialized," "empty," and "vain" ceremony, as opposed to the deeply profound, content-packed, and self-effacing ceremonies of yore. I see that Nikki Finke, after doing such useful work on the writers' strike, has reverted to her non-stop impersonation of Helena Kallianiotes as Palm Apodaca in Five Easy Pieces. Outside, in the non-filmic blogosphere, the ultra-refined Ann Althouse pronounces the show "sucky." At least until Daniel Day-Lewis—"I love that guy!", yeah, me too—shows up.

Good gosh, there's just no pleasing some people. You give 'em pageantry and they complain that there's too much pageantry, it's too long, the pageantry is boring. You give 'em brevity and you get Finke's "This wasn't an Oscars. This was a slightly longer version of the Golden Globes." Great. You know what. I really hope they do bring Pilobolus back next year.

I did a radio tour this morning and one question I got a lot of was "What's with all these Europeans winning the acting awards?" After pointing out that this was, in fact, kind of statistical anomaly given that, with the exception of Cotillard, these were Europeans playing opposite Americans in American film, My Lovely Wife suggested an even better out...pointing out that Cary Grant was a European, David Niven was a European, Errol Flynn was from Australia, Audrey Hepburn from Belgium. That really did the trick.

So, how did you make out with your Oscar pool?

The 80th Annual Academy Awards: Hour the fourth, part un

Okay. I think we took all that as well as could be expected. Cody's speech was short enough to suggest she knew that her moment was gonna be at its inevitable end a little sooner than it might have been had she gotten too cute with it. "I'm learning from you..." Learn harder.

Best Actor. Let's do it.

I TOLD YOU I WOULD EAT YOU!!!!!

Well now we feel even better. "Diablo Cody winning isn't as bad as Crash winning Best Picture."

Now Best Director. And Mr. Scorsese will present. Awesome!! My cynicism is melting away again...

I can't keep up. But I am so stoked to see the Coens get theirs...and we move right along and this thing is gonna end earlier than it has in years and...

and the boys win. What the hell. This is very cool. Go to bed.

The 80th Annual Academy Awards: Hour the third, part deux

Cinematography, presented by C. Diaz, who invokes Murnau's Sunrise. And makes it very clear she has no idea what it is. Gak. So who's gonna get it?

Deakins? Elswit?

Holy moley, it's Elswit!

And another incredibly generous acceptance speech...

Okay, let's get beck to cynicism: "Ladies and gentlemen, two-time Academy Award winner Hillary Swank!"

At least three of the four women in the room: "Yuch."

The In Memoriam montage. Gives very specific from—to—end dates. So we don't all get really pissed that Roy Scheider's not in there. And we get pissed anyway until we remember the dates. But poor Brad Renfro...

Hey, Atonement finally got one! Wot, the score's NOT by Michael Nyman?!?!?

Wowsers, live from Iraq some soldiers give away the best doc short subject award. This will do nothing to mollify the Hollywood Hates America crowd, who won't be satisfied until Patraeus gives out Best Picture. And since Taxi to the Dark Side won Best Feature Doc...

The 80th Annual Academy Awards: Hour the third, part un

Nicole Kidman seems not to have walked the red carpet, and here she is, rather frighteningly stiff, to present the special Oscar to Robert Boyle. That cutaway to C. Diaz makes the spooky factor more resonant.

But the award for Boyle is undeniably and inarguably a good thing, man that guy did some fabulous work, and not just in the Hitchcock stuff either.

I like that shot of Harrison Ford and his illegal smile.

Here's P—Lope announcing best foreign film. Who called The Counterfeiters? Not me, for sure. Figured it would be Mongol or maybe the Wajda. But damn. I was one of the guys who lost faith in the category this year after 4 Months got snubbed. Oh boy. And here's another song from Enchanted. "Oh, fuck me," a renowned blogger in the room just said.

But it's the last of the Enchanted songs, and then the Academy gives a big screw-you to the Disney toonage machine by giving the award to the song from Once. Which is kinda fricking cool...any Frames fans out there? Any of 'em think they'd ever see Glen Hansard holding an Oscar? AWESOME. I don't think I've seen an Oscars that pleased me so much in, like, ever, and Stewart's follow-up joke was PERFECT.

The 80th Annual Academy Awards: Hour the second, part deux

It's the Cyrus. Damn is she perky.

"They realize people make fun of this," one among us wonders, genuinely confused about yet another cheese-laden production number for Alan Menken's not-finest-hour, "That's How You Know," which goes for Little Mermaid calypso lilt and delivers Carnival Cruise jingle quality. "I miss Pilobilus," My Lovely Wife cracks. By the end of the number, it's not a joke anymore.

Ah, Bourne gets the first of its two Academy Awards for categories that poor Jeff Wells doesn't understand the distinction between. I'm gonna have to sit that fellow down some time.

See, I was right. Bourne got both. I rule.

It's sad when the sound mixing guy is funnier that Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill.

"Why does Forrest Whitaker always look like he's about to cry?" Because he FEELS so deeply, people. Wow, Best Actress already, and Blanchett's reaction to her film clip is priceless...

UPSET!!!!! It's the Cotillard!!!! "Don't we hate the French?" someone asks....NOT ANYMORE. Wow. There's something really sweet about seeing someone SO excited about getting this.

I think we can safely say that the Juno menace has been thwarted.