The Jeffrey Wells Thread

[Gregory]

I cannot stand the way Wells writes.

I have one question, though. Actually, two questions. Well, three or four.

Why doesn't he just write "I have three or four questions"? And what exactly are these three or four questions? Is he referring to shit like the following?

“Lester doesn’t own this film — he just directed it, big deal. What does that make him, the King of Siam? And Criterion doesn’t own it either — it just has the video rights for the time being. You know who owns this film? We do.

It slightly irks me that Criterion hardly bothers sending Jon Mulvaney replies to informed questions anymore, yet Becker will take the time to give a generous response to this blogger troll who apparently no one even takes seriously. Why even reply to someone who says "More height is always right"?

The Barry Lyndon case was different because the film was not released at 1.75:1 as Hard Day's Night was, Kubrick of course never approved that aspect ratio, there was no reason whatsoever for the change, and it helped set a precedent for the studio changing 1.66:1 films to 1.75:1 without reason. But that's not what Criterion is doing here.

[Orlac]

It's funny to me that folks are arguing over a difference of 0.09 in the aspect-ratio of one film whilst the polar ice caps are melting and we're due for global calamity. But I guess we need to keep busy somehow, at least until we drown/starve/etc.

I remember the massive row over Barry Lyndon, which I lost interest in after actually watching the Blu-ray and deciding that it looked fine in 1.78:1. Which is hardly surprising given that the compositions would have had to be really millimetre-precise to be significantly affected by that tiny degree of cropping.

Similarly, I'm pretty unfazed by the new Warner BD of Performance also being in 1.78:1.

I noticed about 2002 people really freaking out about the difference between the two ratios because of Warner's faulty release of Hammer's Dracula. The transfer is framed way too low, cutting the top off. But people thing the cropping is due to it being 1.75:1 instead of 1.66:1.

[matrixschmatrix]

Whatever the relative merits of Warner's Barry Lyndon release are- and for the love of God let's not start that up again- I think we can all agree that Jeffrey Wells is the most amusingly absurd person in the tiny circle of professional home video cinephiles around. I imagine that Criterion responded to him on the assumption that the apparent change in aspect ratio might be widely noted, and knowing that their incredibly professional response would satisfy literally everyone else in the world.

[domino harvey]

I'm not sure how he still has a job after that cringe-inducing Vinessa Shaw thing

[tenia]

Sometimes, I forget that Jeffrey Wells is kind of a second Armond White :

"Due respect to Lester but he's not a king. He doesn't own this film. It's not his little toy to play with and fuck around with. This film belongs to millions."

[GaryC]

The Barry Lyndon case was different because the film was not released at 1.75:1 as Hard Day's Night was, Kubrick of course never approved that aspect ratio, there was no reason whatsoever for the change, and it helped set a precedent for the studio changing 1.66:1 films to 1.75:1 without reason. But that's not what Criterion is doing here.

Actually, the instructions to the projectionist (signed by Kubrick) inside the cans for Reel 1 specified 1.66:1 "but no wider than 1.75:1". So he did approve it, even though it wasn't his preference.

We showed it at Southampton University in 1.66:1, projected off a platter, and found that at every reel change the matting on the print started to appear at the top or bottom of the frame. I don't know how distracting that was to the average audience member, but it was to the projectionists watching.

[The Narrator Returns]

Wells keeps it classy, calls Chris Pratt "right on the edge of fat" in Guardians of the Galaxy, somehow tops himself in the comments by posting a picture of Pratt with the caption "Fat is disgusting both physically and metaphorically".

[swo17]

I'll have to take your word for it, as I couldn't make it past the "great nudity in Sin City 2!/Robert Rodriguez is a sexist for putting naked women in his movies" opener.

[domino harvey]

Most surprising part of that posting was that Jeffrey Wells still has press credentials

[Gregory]

Question about Broadcast News below; feel free to skip all the crap about Wells in the top half.
Clicking his "Meilissa Silverstein" link there, and reading backward through his trail of banal trivial controversies that he links to, I found some articles like this one. Excerpt:

A-category women — especially the model-pretty, drop-dead glammies (be they rail thin or breathtakingly curvy and buxom) whom I categorize as triple-As and double-As — are often trouble and not worth the long-run grief. Because they know it’s not that hard to find a replacement at a drop of a hat and are therefore a bit more adjusted to the idea of trading up if push comes to shove. They’ll almost never admit this (even to themselves), but this is often how things work. ... Thank God for life’s exceptions (my last serious relationship was with a solid A and she was fine all around for the most part) but many A-category women (with the exception of A-minus types) are a handful — often with very pricey material expectations and wanting things to be as good as what they got from their well-to-do dads if not better"

This is like getting buttonholed by some blowhard at a party who comes on with unsolicited advice like, "Trust me, don't spend millions of dollars on a status-symbol yacht—it's not worth it" as a way of showing off, except here it's far worse because he's talking about human beings, and, and... not getting into all that.

The reason I'm posting is that I hate to see Broadcast News and the Aaron character tainted with this kind of shit, and have to ask what the hell he's even talking about here—there's no such line in the film.

Albert Brooks‘ character voiced the first in Broadcast News: “Always choose a woman who’s just hot enough to turn you on.” He could have continued by saying, “Reach a little bit higher than that and you’re flirting with trouble. Go much higher than that and you’re flat-out asking for it.”

I Googled a few variations of this "well-known quote" to double-check and found nothing but gross forums with guys exchanging locker-room-level relationship advice, which is where Wells probably belongs, though his posturing probably wouldn't fly in places like that. Even most really lazy misquotations and fabrications have some tiny kernel of truth to make them believable, but there's none whatsoever here, is there? Can this clown please stop acting like he knows things about cinema? He's making actual movies look bad here.

[Perkins Cobb]

Wells keeps it classy, calls Chris Pratt "right on the edge of fat" in Guardians of the Galaxy, somehow tops himself in the comments by posting a picture of Pratt with the caption "Fat is disgusting both physically and metaphorically".

Pratt hasn't gone full tractor yet, in other words, but he'd better watch it.

[jindianajonz]

Wells keeps it classy, calls Chris Pratt "right on the edge of fat" in Guardians of the Galaxy, somehow tops himself in the comments by posting a picture of Pratt with the caption "Fat is disgusting both physically and metaphorically".

Wells' idea of disgusting.

[cdnchris]

Yeah, I wish I was THAT fat

[WorstFella]

Most surprising part of that posting was that Jeffrey Wells still has press credentials

Last year at TIFF I was seated directly behind him during Blue Is the Warmest Colour, and had to hold in laughter when he bailed halfway through the first sex scene.

[Gregory]

That may be because, assuming this is accurate, he'd already seen it twice.
If anyone wants to brave that post, be sure to stay for the 140-word-long sentence that contains the phrase "her magnificent cantaloupe ass" (though he's sorry to put it that way), and then more of his insight into "the feminists."

[criterion10]

Jeff Wells criticizes Amy Schumer in Judd Apatow's latest film for being "chubby" and endures a wrath of hate on Twitter.

[Numero Trois]

I never use "ugly" to describe anyone. A cruel, hurtful word.

But he did say this:

...but there’s no way she’d be an object of heated romantic interest in the real world.

So this is what he's like when he's sober? I'm not even going to link to his latest post on the subject. Hey, if the writing gig ever goes away maybe he can get a job as a professional heckler. Amy has used a few fake hecklers before at her shows. And he's got the clown part down pat.

[mfunk9786]

One of the things I thought watching the Trainwreck trailer this morning was "Man, Amy Schumer takes good care of herself." She looks great, and I don't just mean that in the polite sense. Her and Hader, in a real world sense, are perfectly matched - both relatively offbeat looking, but in good shape and young and funny and bright. Wells is an angry, bitter old man, as we've established time and time again, so he might not know much about that sort of thing.

Schumer wrote this fucking thing, and to suggest another actress because she might weigh 5-10 less pounds is absurd. Douchebag.

My big concern about this movie is whether or not Apatow rewrote his entire family into the last hour of it.

[med]

Does Wells—who has to be pushing 70 at this point—still claim to be middle-aged?

[criterion10]

Film critic Andrew Parker nearly commits suicide, and Jeff Wells takes a moment to remind everyone that he (Wells) is a complete douchebag.

[swo17]

The very definition of empathy:

I’ve been seriously depressed only once in my life (caused by the combination of breaking up with a girlfriend who was astonishing in bed plus zero job prospects)

[cdnchris]

Yeah. That immediately caught my attention, too. Obviously he knows what he's talking about and knows exactly what depression is.

[Gregory]

He loves to throw in subtle and not-so-subtle boasts no matter what he's writing about, for example the sentence right before the ones swo quoted:

I felt sorry for Parker, of course. He’s a pretty good writer, for one thing, and I relate to and respect any skilled wordsmith.

(emphasis added). And I've noticed that he likes to often refer to all these amazing, hot women he's been with. From his review of Timbuktu, for example:

My personal idea of misery is no wifi or sitting through an awful film or being dropped by a beautiful girlfriend who was magnificent in the sack. Misery in Sissako’s film, which is set in the Timbuktu region of Mali, a mostly barren African nation that few people in this country have heard of and wouldn’t give a shit about if they have, is much more hard-core.

There's that famous empathy again. But hey, at least he's heard of Mali. That's better than most people, right?

[Drucker]

The very definition of empathy:

I’ve been seriously depressed only once in my life (caused by the combination of breaking up with a girlfriend who was astonishing in bed plus zero job prospects)

Depression=not getting my way all the time.

[criterion10]

Wow, it seems that Wells took the article down...