"When Peter first showed me some restored images of the film, one was of a couple of the Beatles from the back, and..."

"... their hair in the original looked very clumped. Then he said, 'Now let me show you what we’ve been working on.' It was the same shot, but you could see the individual strands of hair. The new version is a 21st century version of a 20th century movie. It is certainly brighter and livelier than what ended up on videotape. It looks now like it was intended to look in 1969 or 1970, although at my request, Peter did give it a more filmic look than 'Get Back,' which had a slightly more modern and digital look.... [M]ost people who saw Peter’s picture as a corrective to mine haven’t seen mine, because no one was able to see it for 50 years. So unless they were children when they saw it in theaters, the only way most people would have seen it was on VHS or bootlegs, which changed the original aspect ratio and had dark and gloomy pictures and bad sound."

Said Michael Lindsay-Hogg, quoted in "Long Dismissed, the Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’ Film Returns After 54 Years Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s unloved — or misinterpreted? — 1970 documentary, the source for Peter Jackson’s 'Get Back,' will stream on Disney+" (NYT).

I saw "Let It Be" in the theater when it came out in 1970, when I was a "child" of 19. I guess I'll have to subscribe to Disney again to see this digitally restored version. If we can now see the individual strands of the famous hair....

When I get older, losing my hair... it will be digitally possible to restore your hair, to individualize the strands so that they pulsate and coruscate as never before. I was once 19, in a movie theater, gazing upon the film "Let It Be," trying to see the reason why Beatles were breaking up — couldn't Paul please lead more subtly? couldn't George tone down the sarcasm? — and now, at 73, I can strap Vision Pro goggles to my face, lie in bed, and marvel at the individuality of the hairs in the once seemingly clumpy moptops. It's getting so much better all the time.

"In the Beatles circa 1969, Paul McCartney is the negotiator-in-chief, and he’s aware of every eggshell he has to walk around or smash to achieve greatness..."

"... or just to get shit done.... [H]e comes off as surprisingly aware of the minefield of sensitivities around him... and he’s certainly beyond aware that he’s paying a cost to be the boss. He’s a domineering older brother to George and rival/BFF/frenemy to John, and now he’s playing de facto manager to everyone — not necessarily because he’s taken pole position in the band on merit alone, but because Lennon is suddenly more invested in a woman... Seeing McCartney recognize and articulate all these shifts, and soldier on while he gets a little bit sad about them, is one of the pleasures of 'Get Back.' If you don’t come away from this with just a little more admiration for Paul, you may just be too in the bag for John and Yoko and their bag-ism, but that’s all right. Everybody is going to be your favorite or most admired Beatle, some time before you complete the eight-hour Get Back Challenge. 'Daddy’s gone away now, you know, and we’re on our own at the holiday camp,' McCartney says, about they’ve felt rudderless since the death of manager Brian Epstein. In the contretemps with Harrison where the guitarist famously says 'I’ll play whatever you want me to play, or I won’t play at all if you don’t want me to play,' McCartney tells the whole group he’s aware of turning into dad, and he doesn’t like it: 'I’m scared of that one… me being the boss. And I have been for, like, a couple of years – and we all have, you know, no pretending about that.'"

From "Why the Beatles’ ‘Get Back’ May Stand as the Best Rock Doc Ever" by Chris Willman (Variety).

Lots more at the link. I resisted watching this show because I didn't want to subscribe to another streaming service — in this case, Disney. But I gave in, paid the $8 for the first month, and intend to exit as soon as I'm done watching this 8-hour extravaganza. I'm only one hour into it, after 2 sessions. I can only take so much. They look bored, that is, John, George, and Ringo look bored. Paul is more or less everything. That's pretty unpleasant! But I see that's the idea, and I have to watch it slowly enough to appreciate the details, the clues. Is John bored or is he utterly mentally absent, relocated somewhere in drugworld? Is Ringo bored or is he paying intense attention and just essentially, perpetually mute? Is George bored or is he an angry, resentful son of a bitch? 

ADDED: Willman casually used the term "bag-ism" — accomplishing a little play on words. I know what it means. I remember bagism, but I looked up the Wikipedia page anyway:

"I do not want to sit and make a nest and be comfortable, and I did feel so comfortable that I stopped being involved as a person and an artist and that is not something I want."

"I don't want to have comfort, I don't want to have a family, I don't want to have a flat — so I destroyed in a way everything I had in order to be able to build. It is almost like a delete button and you just want to start fresh."

So said Sergei Polunin, in 2012, when he was 22 and had suddenly quit the Royal Ballet, where he was the youngest dancer ever to have been made a principal.

I'm reading that today because it was presented as related by BBC News where I'd gone to read "Booed tenor quits La Scala's Aida/Top tenor Roberto Alagna has stunned opera-goers at La Scala in Milan by storming off stage in the middle of a performance after he was booed."

That's an article from 2006, which I was reading as a consequence of this search of my own blog archive:

I was looking at that because Meade had texted me a little video that made me think "La Scala" had some personal significance to us that I ought to have remembered — not that everything I should remember is collected in the blog archive.

How is Roberto Alagna doing these days?  The following year he performed in Aida at the Metropolitan Opera and got a standing ovation. I guess he's recovered from the hurt feelings he got being booed. I like the "Early years" section of his Wikipedia article:

Alagna was born outside the city of Paris in 1963 to a family of Sicilian immigrants. As a teenager, the young Alagna began busking and singing pop in Parisian cabarets, mostly for tips. Influenced primarily by the films of Mario Lanza and learning from recordings of many historic tenors, he then switched to opera, but remained largely self-taught....

That makes me think of the movie "Heavenly Creatures." Have you ever seen that Peter Jackson movie, where the girls (one of whom is played by Kate Winslet) go absolutely mad for Mario Lanza?



And what has become of Sergei Polunin? Well, at the end of the article quoted above, he says that ballet was his "childhood goal," and he achieved it at age 19, "And then I said 'what's next?' and I set myself a different goal at 19 to become an actor. I started watching movies more carefully, watching actors - the way they act, the way the movie is filmed, just as a hobby in a way, but also something to progress to maybe in the future." And here he is talking about his role in the 2017 film "Murder on the Orient Express":



"... into the tongue, into the mouse..."

Mira Sorvino cries over confirmed suspicion.

Just seeing this after I awoke, I burst out crying. There it is, confirmation that Harvey Weinstein derailed my career, something I suspected but was unsure. Thank you Peter Jackson for being honest. I’m just heartsick https://t.co/ljK9NqICbm

— Mira Sorvino (@MiraSorvino) December 15, 2017

ADDED: Here's the underlying story. Excerpt:

"I now suspect we were fed false information about both of these talented women [Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino] - and as a direct result their names were removed from our casting list " [said Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson].... "My experience, when Miramax controlled the Lord of the Rings... was of Weinstein and his brother behaving like second-rate Mafia bullies. They weren't the type of guys I wanted to work with - so I haven't," he said.

"It is tempting to just whine about how Hollywood is so risk-averse that they will reboot or sequalize any remotely familiar 1980′s/1990′s property they can find."

"But these announcements never fail to make me a little sad. The stench in the air isn’t greed or fear of the new, but rather a token amount of desperation."

From an April 18, 2014 Forbes article titled: "Robin Williams Making 'Mrs. Doubtfire 2' Should Make Us Sad."

"[A] technical shift in moviemaking that's as significant as 3D, color, or even sound."

What is it?

Peter Jackson's plans to shoot "The Hobbit" at 48 frames per second -- twice the current rate...

James Cameron, who has verbally committed to shooting his "Avatar" prequels at 48p or higher, [said]  "If the 3D puts you into the picture... the higher frame rate takes the glass out of the window."

Thinking about going to the movies.

Look at how this silly man is outraged that I talk about movies when I haven't seen them. It would be a nice advantage for the folks who make movies if they could get people to believe that it was inappropriate to talk until you'd paid up and wasted your time. I think a key skill in modern life is figuring out which movies to avoid. Well, why don't I just keep my thoughts to myself? I'm a blogger: we display our thought patterns in real time. If you aren't interested, don't read. Really, why is that silly man upset? Does he have a financial interest in the movie? Or is he some fanboy who really, really wants Peter Jackson to succeed?

Occasionally, I actually put three hours of my precious life into movie-viewing. Usually, it's not worth it, even though I rarely do it and am highly selective. Having something bloggable does create a little additional value, but trotting out an actual movie review, MSM-style, doesn't interest me much. If I were paid to do it, I'd put in the effort needed to find new ways to say "X gave a great performance" and "the plot was confusing" and so forth.

All that said, I am giving a tiny bit of thought to seeing a movie today and blogging about it. Here's what's playing in Madison. Actually reading that list reduced my interest in going to the movies about 80%. The only one I really want to see is "Capote," but I don't know that I want to see it in the theater, especially the crap theater where it's playing. Then there are some that I think I've heard are -- in the inevitable cliché -- "supposed to be good"? "The Squid and the Whale"? Well, what the hell is it? I'd have to do some research to have any idea. What a drag! "The Family Stone"? The clip looked good when Sarah Jessica Parker was on "The Daily Show" the other day. But have I heard that it's "supposed to be bad"? I can't remember. Again, research is required! "King Kong"? You know how I feel about that. I'm just not that into nostril-gazing.

I spend much of the day staring at a screen already. For diversion, why look at another screen? There is that famous real world that I've heard so much about. I could go out there.

BONUS QUESTIONS, thought up on rereading this post: What actress has the most beautiful nostrils? How much harder is that question to answer than what actress has the most beautiful eyes or the most beautiful lips? There's a reason it's harder: you don't really want to look at nostrils, even on a beautiful face. Sometimes you get an actress who does too much nostril acting. You know, that flaring and re-flaring. Once you start noticing it, the performance becomes comic. Can you think of any actresses or actors who belong to the nostril-flaring school of drama? Any examples of an actor or actress that does nostril-flaring spoofily, for deliberate comic effect? And can someone clue me in on how much Peter Jackson's Kong goes in for nostril-flaring. Nostrils, nostrils, nostrils. There, I've said it! I'm obsessed with nostrils. Nostrils are the body part of the week, here on the Althouse blog.

UPDATE: Can you believe it? The very next day I write an elaborate post about another movie I haven't seen. I'm starting to think that this actually is a specialty of mine -- check out my old posts on "Alexander" -- and I'm going to pursue it actively and intentionally now. I note too that some of my critics are perplexed about the nostril-focused material in this post. They really aren't understanding the unique mix of topics that is Althouse. The most flat-footedly pedestrian of these critics feel compelled to point out time and again that I am a law professor: in their regimented world, everyone is supposed to stay neatly on track, doggedly pursuing the matters of their occupational specialization. The dentist must blog about teeth, and the conlawprof about conlaw. How terribly dull! What grim little minds!

The Golden Globe nominations.

Here.

Best Pic, Drama
Brokeback Mountain
The Constant Gardener
Good Night, and Good Luck
A History of Violence
Match Point

Best Pic, Musical/Comedy
Mrs. Henderson Presents
Pride Prejudice
The Producers
Squid and Whale
Walk the Line

Director:
Woody Allen, Match Point
George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck
Peter Jackson, King Kong
Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain
Fernando Mereilles, The Constant Gardener
Steven Spielberg, Munich

Actor, Drama
Russell Crowe, Cinderella Man
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Terence Howard, Hustle and Flow
Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain
David Strathairn, Good Night, and Good Luck

Actor, Musical/Comedy
Peirce Brosnan, The Matador
Jeff Daniels, The Squid and the Whale
Johnny Depp, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Nathan Lane, The Producers
Cillian Murphy, Breakfast on Pluto
Joaquin Phoenix, Walk the Line

Actress - Musical/Comedy
Judi Dench, Mrs. Henderson Presents
Keira Knightley, Pride & Prejudice
Laura Linney, Squid and the Whale
Sarah Jessica Parker, The Family Stone
Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line

Actress - Drama
Maria Bello, A History of Violence
Felicity Huffman, Transamerica
Gwyneth Paltrow, Proof
Charlize Theron, North Country
Ziyi Zhang, Memoirs of a Geisha

Actress, Supporting Role
Scarlett Johannsson, Match Point
Shirley MacLaine, In Her Shoes
Frances McDormand, North Country
Rachel Weisz, Contant Gardener
Michelle Williams, Brokeback Mountain

Actor, Supporting Role
George Clooney, Syriana
Matt Dillon, Crash
Will Ferrell, The Producers
Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man
Bob Hoskins, Mrs. Henderson Presents

I have only seen "A History of Violence," actually. I wrote about it here. Key passage:

Maria Bello is not a good actress. She's interesting to look at, but she can't do what is needed in a film like this. Cronenberg tried to cover for her inadequacies by having her do things like run out of the room and throw up off camera or bury her face in Mortenson's shoulder and cry. We'd watch more of him then, instead of her. And by the way, if there's one thing I would like to ban in movies, it's having a character express emotion by vomiting.

Okay, so I guess I shouldn't trust any of the other nominations.

Another thing. I don't like the way dramatic biopics of musicians screw up the classifications into dramatic and musical/comedy. Joaquin Phoenix, emoting as Johnny Cash, will utterly unfairly overshadow the comic performances that the two-category actor approach is supposed to highlight. Unfair. Moreover: unfair to Johnny Depp. The outrage!

UPDATE: Corrected, after someone in the comments wisecracked "Pretty sorry set of musicals/comedies those actresses were in." I'd cut and pasted from the Oscarwatch site, and they had "Musical/Comedy" as the heading for the "Supporting" actress category. "North Country" and "Brokeback Mountain" are so far from being comedy that even the thought of going to see them makes me feel bad. Another correction: I have seen more than one of these films, not just "History of Violence," but also "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." Sorry, Johnny! Don't know how it slipped my mind.

How to film a remake: more character development ... for King Kong.

So you're remaking "King Kong," and you're Peter Jackson. Why remake a classic? Others might say, because of the computerized special effects now available. Jackson's idea is more character development, especially for Kong:

"He's a very old gorilla and he's never felt a single bit of empathy for another living creature," Jackson said.

So a lot of thought has gone into exploring what would happen if there were a relationship between an old, brutalized gorilla and a young woman.

"You introduce this other person into his life which initially he thinks he's going to kill and then he slowly moves away from that and it comes full circle," he said. "That's what we're exploring and its really fun to go into that psychological depth with it."

Who knew Kong was old? So his interest in the girl is of the dirty old man variety. These Hollywood movies: they always put an older male with a much younger female. Or is Jackson going to de-sexualize the story? Maybe a war and peace allegory? Kong is the victim of empire, driven to terrorism. The girl, Ann Darrow, then somehow affects him so that he throws off his terrorist ways (and falls from a tall NYC building). But what is Ann in this War on Terror allegory? The U.N.?

UPDATE: Can you imagine how different the history of the United Nations would have to have been before it would work to have a remake of King Kong in which the building he falls from is the U.N.?

Titanic and Lord of the Rings--another connection. I noted here that LOTR fans ought to have a special regard for the cast of Titanic because it starred Kate Winslet, who appeared in an early Peter Jackson film, Heavenly Creatures. (HC is one of my all-time favorite films, by the way.) A reader writes in to note another connection between the Titanic and LOTR casts: the captain of the Titanic and the King of Rohan in LOTR were played by the same actor, Bernard Hill.

Titanic vs. Lord of the Rings. Prof. Bainbridge is responding to my challenge about whether, if there were an ensemble acting Oscar, LOTR would have won it and neither Titanic nor Ben Hur would have, thus making LOTR the biggest Oscar-winning movie ever, with 12, not just 11.

Bainbridge points out that LOTR won the SAG ensemble acting award, but Titanic didn't. The Full Monty did!

I realize now how complex this what-if question is. Bainbridge points out that the SAG ensemble award may be essentially its version of best picture: SAG only gives acting awards, so ensemble works as a way to recognize the whole picture. If that's so, and if the Oscar voters tracked the all-actor SAG voters, we could infer that the ensemble Oscar would have gone to Titanic. But it is a different group of voters, as we can tell from the way the Oscars didn't care at all about The Full Monty.

Bainbridge also theorizes that an ensemble award would be used to honor casts in movies that did not feature one or two dominant stars, that is "true ensembles." Voters might conceive of the ensemble award as a way to make up for the fact that films with large crowds of actors don't have a fair shot at the individual actor awards. Clearly, LOTR had many great actors in it, but they were in relatively small roles. But small roles can earn supporting actor awards, and it's notable that no one even had a nomination in a supporting category.

I can't speak for Ben Hur, because I've never seen it, but I'll accept that Charlton Heston was an overriding star there, and maybe the cast of thousands types would not seem to deserve any recognition.

But how about Titanic? Bainbridge says look at the posters: it's all about Kate Winslet (the sublime Kate Winslet, whom true Peter Jackson fans will love from Heavenly Creatures) and Leonardo diCaprio. But what about Kathy Bates (people love her), Victor Garber (the New Yorker thought he was the best thing in the film), Billy Zane (an acquired taste), David Warner (you want an English actor of long reputation, look at this), Francis Fisher, Jonathan Hyde (deliciously evil as Ismay), Bill Paxton, and the beloved old actress Gloria Stuart?

I say it would have won an ensemble award. What was the real competition? Not The Full Monty. Not Boogie Nights (because of the subject matter). Maybe L.A. Confidential. Considering the extreme love of the acting in Mystic River, I'd say that the ensemble award for Titanic would have been more likely than for LOTR.

UPDATE: Christopher Althouse, who's a devoted student of film, writes: "I think Titanic and Ben Hur would both have won ensemble awards, and to the extent that they could have not won, I don't think it's a given that LOTR would have won."