I finally caught up with COMEDIAN Monday night, and it's not bad -- a thoughtful, somewhat darker than expected look at the lives and anxieties of stand-up comics.

One of them is the rich and affable Jerry Seinfeld, who's gone back to the circuit where he began in the early '80s and has been trying out new material over the last eighteen months or so in small clubs. Another is a talented but extremely dislikable up-and-comer named Orny Adams, whom I'd never heard of until seeing this film.

COMEDIAN is a friendly (i.e., admiring) portrait of Seinfeld and his recent travails as a club comedian, but it doesn't play like a suck-up piece. Not overtly, at least.

The general focus of COMEDIAN is how tough it is to make people laugh, and the toll it takes on the practitioners of the craft. It's about what comics go through -- preparing the right jokes and honing their material and style of delivery to the point where the performer feels...well, not confident, exactly, but less anxious than usual.

Seinfeld sweats this stuff throughout much of the film, which was shot on digital video over a year's time by director Christian Charles and producer Gary Streiner, but he comes off as a struggling, hard-driving, basically-okay guy.

But Charles and Steiner follow Adams around a lot also, and he seems like the anti-Seinfeld - a driven but inwardly seething and sometimes hostile young man (he's 30), beset by self-doubt and pushing like hell to make it, but at the same time frustrated that club crowds aren't laughing harder, or have failed to get a particular joke. The film doesn't let you absorb much of his act, but a lot of what he has to say backstage -- biting and brilliant as some of it is -- is aimed out rather than in.

Adams' basic mantra seems to be, "I'm talented and funny but I'm not famous enough, dammit, and I'm miserable and don't have a life....not fair!"

After a gig, for example, he talks about how pissed he was at an audience member for asking him if he was gay. (He had previously said he's "single by choice.") If I had been Adams I would have preened a bit and maybe gotten a chuckle from that, and then done a whole riff on being gay and the appearances of same. There's a mountain of material in this subject alone and probably a lot of laughter...but Adams lets his anger run the moment.

It hits you about halfway through that COMEDIAN isn't just making Adams look bad (with his complete and utter cooperation, of course -- the guy hides none of his insecurities, which is usually a mark of an above-average talent), but by pushing his thorniness in our face they're making Seinfeld -- almost as anxious as Adams, but at the same time more centered and circumspect -- look very cool by comparison.

Over and over, the film shows us the prickly Adams taking offense at this or that, and Seinfeld suffering from similar frustrations and insecurities but handling the whole deal with a bit more class and composure. Then again, being a successful multi-millionaire with a famous TV series under your belt has been known to help in these departments.

How many "up" moments are in COMEDIAN? A few. No, more than a few...but it's mostly about suffering. Suffering and some form of payoff down the road, depending on how lucky or talented you are, and whether people like you.

I especially savored a moment when Seinfeld goes "up" in the middle of his act-- i.e., loses his train of thought -- and can't get rolling again. He handles it, but it's painful. I've been there. I went "up" when I was acting in a play once. It felt like my spirit had risen out of my body and I was floating ten feet above, looking down at this schmuck who couldn't remember his lines.

Chris Rock shows up backstage and makes Seinfeld feel awful at one point by telling him about watching a two-and-a half-hour set by Bill Cosby in which he "killed" the audience and kept on doing this for the whole set. This after we've heard Seinfeld talk about how difficult it is to put together a single hour's worth of good material.

And I liked a bit in which comic Robert Klein (a guy "we all looked up to," says Seinfeld at one point) talks about his annoyance with Southern Florida as a retirement haven. "Here's a place where thousands upon thousands of perfectly healthy, exercising, sound-of-mind people move to at age 65," he tells a club crowd. "30 years later --dead!"

Miramax put this 81-minute doc into New York and L.A. theatres on October 11th. It opened in 40 other markets on 10.25. It's a smart, reasonably illuminating piece. You definitely come out of COMEDIAN knowing more about the hellish business of being funny than you did going in.

Regrettably So

[Reader warning: this story contains some technical jargon about film preservation techniques and especially the specific requirements of producing a sharp digital transfer of a classic film. Please accept my apologies in advance.]

Paramount Home Video's upcoming DVD of Alfred Hitchcock's TO CATCH A THIEF (due in stores on 11.5) looks okay, if you're satisfied with that. Call me overly picky, but the DVD of a classic title like this should look distinctly better than it does on video tape or on a cable movie channel, and in my opinion this one doesn't.

I realize most people who rent or buy this CATCH won't notice anything terribly wrong with it, but it seems pretty clear to me that PHV has willfully put out a substandard product -- one they could have made look better but chose not to for some internal reason, which was probably cost.

I'm a longtime fan of this relatively lightweight 1955 thriller, which stars Cary Grant and Grace Kelly and is usually described by erudite critics as a cinematic souffle or glass of champagne. So I naturally felt some excitement when an advance copy of this presumably spruced-up THIEF arrived at my doorstep last week.

It's said to be an extremely beautiful-looking film, after all, partly due to the artistry of Robert Burks, who won a Best Cinematography Oscar for his work on it. The visual delights of the thing are also due to THIEF being a large-format film. It was shot in VistaVision, a process developed in the early '50s that sends 35mm film through a motion picture camera sideways, and therefore uses a larger film-stock area. VistaVision was prized in its heyday for capturing images with greater density and sharpness than what regular 35mm film delivered.

Look at the DVD's of Hitchcock's VERTIGO and NORTH BY NORTHWEST, which were also shot in VistaVision, and you'll see what I'm talking about. The VERTIGO film elements were lovingly restored and then transferred to 70mm by Robert Harris and James Katz, but the initial VistaVision photography (again, by Burks) is another reason it looks so rich and painterly. Burks' VV photography of NORTH BY NORTHWEST is also a reason the DVD looks as good as it does, combined with an excellent job of digital finessing by John Lowry of Lowry Digital.

To my eyes, Paramount's TO CATCH A THIEF DVD doesn't even approach the visual ripeness to be found in these other two. It's got what seems like too much darkness and shadows in certain scenes, and the 1.85 cropping seems to chop off too much visual information at times.

Okay...here comes the technical stuff. Grim up and hold on.

Paramount Home Video spokesperson Martin Blythe says the THIEF DVD is from VistaVision elements, but what this really means is that it was taken from YCM separations to a reduced-size dupe negative of a 35mm version of the film, which was derived from original VistaVision elements. Translation: Hitchcock shot THIEF big and rich in '55, but Paramount has made it smaller and murkier some 47 years later.

"We stand by the position that the film looks fantastic," says Blythe. "That's not to say technology can't make it look better in the future, but it looks as good as it's going to look right now."

I asked restoration expert Robert Harris (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, SPARTACUS, VERTIGO, et. al) what could have been done to make TO CATCH A THIEF look better: "There are two ways to make this film look great," he said. "One would be to color correct the original VistaVision negative as best as possible, and create a VistaVision interpositive. Then transfer this to digital tape and then digitally correct it for fading and loss of information. This would provide a beautiful transfer, but only for video uses.

"The other way would be to use the 8-perf separation masters," he explained, "and from these produce a VistaVision dupe color negative through contact printing -- not optically - and then transfer from this."

The digital transfer on the THIEF disc was done in 1999, initially for TV broadcast purposes. "They could have fixed this film and done it right for not a lot of money," says Harris. "I just don't get it."

It would be reasonable to presume that money, or rather Paramount Home Video's not wanting to spend too much of the stuff on this particular title, is a backstage factor. A video post-production veteran in Los Angeles describes the company's attitude about the work that went into the THIEF disc as "practical."

And yet PHV has allegedly spent over $500,000 to obtain a pair of first-rate transfers of early 1950s black -and-white films -- Billy Wilder's SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950) and William Wyler's ROMAN HOLIDAY (1953), both of which are expected in late November. So it's not as if PHV hasn't been willing to step up and do the right thing on other occasions.

Paramount Home Video executives Phil Murphy and Barry Allen have won respect within film restoration and preservation circles for trying to turn things around at PHV, which used to be one of the most indifferent or negligent (take your pick) companies around in terms of film preservation. A film specialist says, "They're trying. The way they're running things [at PHV] is a lot better than the way it was before."

And yet PHV has now visually under-represented a widely respected Hitchcock film that won an Oscar for its eye-popping cinematography. If some kind of penny-pinching was necessary, you'd think they would have picked on some other title.

"They're probably moving hundreds of thousands of units of this film, and they're going to make a lot of money from it," says one observer. "This is a gorgeous film. Why should people have to buy it twice?

Addendum: There are three decently assembled featurettes on the THIEF DVD - "Writing and Casting TO CATCH A THIEF," "The Making of TO CATCH A THIEF and Alfred Hitchcock" and "TO CATCH A THIEF: An Appreciation." Prepared by Laurent Bouzereau, they aren't exactly top-level pieces.... but they do help mollify the slightly-burned feeling that the image quality imparts.

Most Wanted DVD's

Starting Friday, 11.1, I'm going to start running a box listing the best movies people would most like to see on DVD. With the help of Robert Harris and DVD Newsletter's Doug Pratt, I've put together a list of 61 for now. Most of these titles have been sitting on my private little DVD wish list for years...now they're public.

The titles in the "Most Wanted" box each week will number approximately ten. These won't just be films that need to be seen on DVD, but which require energetic new transfers involving film restoration and/or digital clean-ups in order to achieve the highest-quality result possible. Many other films that the ones listed here need such treatment -- this is only a sprinkling.

The idea of the box is to remind DVD distributors about which are the most-wanted titles, and to make new lists of other worthy candidates based on reader suggestions. Anyway, starting off...

The Alamo ('60, d: John Wayne -- restored version, when and if it happens); The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938, d: Michael Curtiz, Errol Flynn, et. al.); Around the World in 80 Days (not taken from 35mm elements, but original 70mm, 30 frame-per-second, Todd-AO roadshow version); Sam Peckinpah's The Ballad of Cable Hogue ('70, w/ Robards, Stevens). Peter Glenville's Becket ('64 w/ O'Toole, Burton); Betrayal ('83, d: David Jones, w/ Irons, Kingsley, Hodges -- best Pinter ever put on screen); Blow Up ('66, d: Michelangelo Antonioni, w/ Hemmings, Redgrave, Miles); >; Borsalino ('70, d: Jacques Deray, w/ Belmondo, Delon);; Captain Blood ('35, d: Michael Curtiz, w/ Errol Flynn), and Castle Keep ('69, d: Sydney Pollack, w/ Lancaster, O'Neal, Dern -- trippy, bordering-on-surreal antiwar film). Charley Varrick ('73, d: Don Siegel, w/ Walter Matthau, Joe Don Baker); Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight; Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist ('71); Luchino Visconti's The Damned ('69); Darling (d: John Schlesinger, w/ Christie, Bogarde, Harvey). Day for Night ('73, d: Francois Truffaut, w/ Bisset, Leaud, Aumont); Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round ('66, d: Bernard Girard, w/ Coburn - cool little caper film featuring Harrison Ford making screen debut as bellboy); Elia Kazan's East of Eden ('55, w/ Dean, Massey, Van Fleet -- 2.55 to 1 widescreen version, w/ overture); Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel ('62); Far From the Madding Crowd ('67, d: John Schlesinger, w/ Christie, Stamp, Finch, Bates). Foreign Correspondent ('40, d: Alfred Hitchcock, w/ McCrea, Day, Sanders, Benchley, Gwenn); The High and the Mighty ('54, d: William Wellman, w/ Wayne, Stack, Trevor - 2.55 to 1 Scope version - needs restoration); I Confess ('53, d: Hitchcock, w/ Clift, Baxter, Aherne, Malden); It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World ('63, d: Stanley Kramer --restored, full-length version taken from 70mm elements, w/ overture, entr'acte music & effects); Sam Peckinpah's Junior Bonner ('72, w/ McQueen, Preston, Lupino, Johnson). Richard Lester's Juggernaut ('74, w/ Harris, Sharif, Hemmings, Jones); King Kong ('33, d: Ernest B. Schoedsack, Merian C. Cooper); King of Kings ('61, d: Nicholas Ray, w/ Hunter, Hatfield, Ryan - preferably mastered off roadshow 70mm version); Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita ('60); Luchino Visconti's The Leopard ('63, w/ Lancaster, Delon, Cardinale -- needs restoration). Lifeboat ('44, d: Alfred Hitchcock, w/ Bankhead, Hodiak, Slezak, et. al. -- has never had necessary work done); Little Caesar (1930, d: Mervyn LeRoy, w/ Robinson, Blackmer -- "Is this the end of Little Rico?); Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons ('42 - among the most irritating and overrated "great" films ever made); Douglas Sirk's Magnificent Obsession ('54, w/ Hudson, Wyman); Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis ('44 -- glorious color). Murder My Sweet ('44, d: Edward Dmytryk, w/ Powell, Trevor, Kruger); Lewis Milestone's Mutiny on the Bounty ('62, w/ Brando, Howard, Harris -- DVD should ideally be based upon digital reconstitution of 70mm Ultra Panavision version with 2.76 to 1 aspect ratio); Abel Gance's Napoleon ('27); Jules Dassin's Never on Sunday ('60); Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 ('76 -- the 255-minute version will suffice). Ninotchka ('39, d: Ernst Lubitsch, w/ Garbo, Douglas); Objective: Burma ('45, d: Raoul Walsh, w/ Errol Flynn); Francis Coppola's One From the Heart ('82); Sergio Leone's Once upon a Time in America ('84, w/ De Niro, Woods, McGovern - the 225-minute version, of course); Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past ('47, w/ Mitchum, Greer, Douglas -- mid '90s Image laser disc is the standard to match). The Outfit ('74, d: John Flynn - hard-boiled, underseen noir crime pic w/ Duvall, Baker, Ryan); Preston Sturges' The Palm Beach Story ('42), Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger ('75, w/ Nicholson, Scheider, Hendry); Richard Lester's Petulia ('68 w/ Scott, Christie, Knight, Chamberlain - brilliant, underseen & underappreciated); Frank Perry's Play It as It Lays ('72, w/ Weld, Perkins, Grimes -- "It's not artificial, it's reconstituted"); Warren Beatty's Reds ('81). Ride the High Country ('61, d: Sam Peckinpah, w/ McCrea, Scott); Ryan's Daughter ('70, d: David Lean -- taken from 70mm roadshow elements, if possible); The Sea Hawk ('40 d: Michael Curtiz); A Shock to the System ('90, d: Jan Egleson, w/ Caine, Reigert, McGovern); The Spy Who Came in from the Cold ('66, d: Martin Ritt, w/ Burton, Bloom, Werner -- Paramount Home Video laser disc & VHS versions are barely watchable). Swing Time ('36, d: George Stevens w/ Astaire, Rogers);The Thing (1951 Christian Nyby / Howard Hawks version w/ Tobey, Arness); They Died With Their Boots On ('41, d: Raoul Walsh, w/ Flynn, De Havilland); To Catch a Thief ('55, d: Hitchcock... properly done this time, using 8-perf VistaVision elements); Two for the Road ('67, d: Stanley Donen, w/ Finney, Hepburn); What's New Pussycat? ('65, d: Clive Donner...a mess, but also curiously amusing in a spirited, anarchic sort of way); and Yankee Doodle Dandy ('42, d: Michael Curtiz, w/ Cagney, Huston, Leslie).

Too True

"Having read the screenplay for ADAPTATION, I tend to agree with you that this falls under the Original Screenplay category. They may have come to Charlie Kaufman and asked him to adapt the Orchid Thief book, but that is not what ended up on the page. This is the most original thing I have ever read, and I am so looking forward to seeing how it looks onscreen." -- Darren Hayward, New Zealand.

"There are few things one will come across in this lifetime that is as original as Charlie Kaufman's truly amazing screenplay for ADAPTATION....and yet it's being put forward by Columbia as a candidate for Best Adapted Screenplay. ADAPTATION is an adapted (am I coming across as adept or inept here?) screenplay, and yet it is an original. How can this be? Trying to explain this risks tainting the premise of the film for those who've not yet read the screenplay or seen the film. We should probably let this be for now. It's a special, fragile thing.

"You know, I talk to my wife using words like this. I guess that's how highly I think of this script. To put a spin on a nicely written and delivered Alan Cumming line, Charlie's conundrum is completely discouraged." -- Alex Ulloa

Origins

"I've heard people say THE RING rips off THE SIXTH SENSE. Well, Hideo Nakata's RINGU (the Japanese original for THE RING) came out in 1998, almost a year before the Willis pic.

"I haven't seen RINGU, but I watched Nakata's latest, DARK WATER, and it's one of the scariest things I've ever experienced. The slow-building creepiness that is apparently Nakata's trademark is attempted but not quite achieved in THE RING, which is just slow and doesn't really build.

"Overall I was okay with THE RING, but some others were not so kind. The guy I saw it with said he wanted his money back. I heard a girl say it was the worst movie she'd ever seen." -- Zheng Wang, Bellevue, WA.

Role Playing

Jennifer Chung, a "brand planner" for Grey Worldwide in New York City, was first to identify Friday's cast. They appeared together in RENNAISSANCE MAN ('94). Jennifer beat Steve Michaelson of Watertown, New York, by only a minute or two, so let's give him a hand also.

Today's cast: Sudie Bond, Marta Heflin, Cher, Karen Black, Sandy Dennis, Kathy Bates.

What's That Line?

Matthew Toomey of Brisbane, Australia, was first to identify Friday's dialogue. It's from ADAPTATION ('02), directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufman and... uhm, Donald Kaufman. Nicolas Cage and Tilda Swinton are the players in the scene.

This will be way too tricky and obscure for most readers, but it's good to make things hard every so often. An older guy is talking to a student at a Midwestern college, which the older guy once attended.

Older Guy: You see that tower? In my day, kids used to climb up that thing and unfurl a "Go Kansas" banner before big football games
Student: Oh, yeah? Some guys built a huge bong up there last year. It was pretty hilarious.

The older guy hasn't a clue what a "bong" is.

Older Guy: A bong, huh? That's great.
Student: Hey, we're having a little mixer tonight to welcome the new pledges and little sisters. You should come.
Older Guy: Oh, no. That's for you young fellas. I know what goes on at those things.
Student: No, really. It's nothing wild - just a little reception. I'm sure we'd all be honored if you came. Chuck said so.
Older Guy: Honored? Really?
Student: Yeah. He said it'd give everybody a sense of our, you know, our heritage as Beta Sigs.
Older Guy: (brightening) Well, then...I accept.

Name the film, the year of release, the director, the screenwriter(s), and the actor playing the Older Guy.