Yeah, that's what I said. ANGER MANAGEMENT cops out on itself during the final fifteen minutes. Angry? Not us...kidding! It gets all alpha and blissful and emotionally affirmative, which is about as funny to me as a church sermon.

Nicholson plays a smooth-talking anger-management counselor named Buddy Rydell, and Sandler -- a guy whose basic comic attitude has always been about repressed rage -- is a mild-mannered (read: inwardly fuming) New York marketing guy named Dave Buznik who becomes Buddy's therapy bitch. Buznik is ordered by a judge (played by the recently deceased Lynn Thigpen) to undergo anger therapy with Rydell after getting into a bizarre altercation with a stewardess and a security guy aboard a plane.

You can tell from the trailer that Rydell is a much bigger wack job than Buznik, and while this idea curlicues around towards the end, it's basically a one-joke propellant. Nicholson pulling Sandler's chain... needling, goading...until the underground lava reaches critical mass and suddenly it's Krakatoa, east of Java.

I'm a sucker for any Nicholson performance that lets Jack be "Jack." You know what I mean -- one of his self-acknowledging, poke-in-the-ribs performances. None of that subdued, actor-ish, Warren Schmidt-type stuff. Buddy isn't in the same realm as Garret Breedlove in TERMS OF ENDEARMENT and is nowhere close to Badass Badusky in THE LAST DETAIL, but good enough by current degraded standards.

ANGER MANAGEMENT is smarter and more assured than any out-and-out comedy Sandler's ever starred in (which lets out PUNCH DRUNK LOVE, of course). I was completely charmed by his low-key, close-to-the-vest performance. He's got a scene with Heather Graham in a bar that ranks as a minor classic, if you ask me. I am now prepared to forgive Sandler, in fact, for all those films he made after THE WEDDING SINGER and before PUNCH DRUNK LOVE, on the condition he promises to never venture back into dumb-ass, low-rent territory again.

And yet ANGER MANAGEMENT self-destructs at the very end. Or implodes, rather. It feels as if someone at Revolution Studios got scared at the idea of an angry comedy, and persuaded Sandler and Nicholson and Seagal to lighten up and send the audience out with a smile. What I know for sure is that the ending feels like it was massaged by a committee.

I don't want to give anything away, but there's a dreadful bit at the very end in which Nicholson explains to Sandler what was really going on from the beginning, and it feels like a response to a focus group having said at an early stage of testing, "We don't get it...this should have been explained more clearly." David Dorfman's 7.24.01 draft of ANGER MANAGEMENT, which I read about a year ago, has an explanation scene also, but it's much better (i.e., more credible) than the film's.

The most glaring difference between Dorfman's script and the flick is the big finale. The printed version ends in an angrier, more physically confrontational way than the film does. It's a Dave- vs.-Buddy, pull-out-the-stops, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN scene set in and around a mountain cabin, and enlivened with the firing of M-16s and exploding grenades. It's in keeping, at least, with the movie's basic theme. It's funny and it fits.

The movie ends with a big, rousing, hooray-for-love scene during a baseball game at Yankee Stadium, and prominently features former mayor Rudy Guiliani. In other words, Osama bin Laden had as much to do with the shaping of it as Segal or Sandler or Revolution Studios chief Joe Roth. ANGER was shot last spring and summer in the New York area, and someone obviously decided that a violent ending didn't groove with the mood of post-9.11 recovery.

You can feel the 9.11 influence early on, in fact. There's a line in the opening airplane scene in which a flight attendant says to Sandler as a way of explaining her uptight, alarmist attitude that "these are difficult times we're going through," or words to this effect. This line is repeated by another character right after this, and it got a small laugh at the screening I attended.

This is pretty nervy when you think about it -- a mainstream, big-studio comedy snickering at emotionally frazzled attitudes among airline employees, etc.. It makes it all the more ironic that ANGER MANAGEMENT ends the way it does. The final scene in Central Park is almost like a mass-therapy session saying to its American audience, "We're not really angry people...we're big and open-hearted enough to see past all that...we're into love, hugs and healing."

Sure thing.

Sonoma Glide

I've seen six and half movies so far, all of them in the festival's mainstream section, with one more to see today before voting on Saturday. And the one I like the best -- the nerviest, the funniest, the most alive -- isn't even in the running because it's been designated as a "lounge" movie, which is a Sonoma Film Festival distinction that means edgy and out-there, and is therefore out of contention. And it's Pauly Shore's YOU'LL NEVER WIEZ IN THIS TOWN AGAIN.

I know I wrote about it last year, but this is a very clever, witty, bizarrely honest statement by Shore that simultaneously says "me, me, me, me, me" and at the same time says, "My career is fucked and it's my fault, and I've gotta figure out why and how to change things." There may be a few too many Hollywood faces doing comic cameos, but most of the jokes work (some are hilarious) and it's well cut and full of energy and daring and pizazz. It's still being shown on high-def video. Shore wants a theatrical run before going to video, and I don't blame him. I don't know how well it'll do, but it's by far the best Pauly Shore film ever made and that should count for something.

Everyone you meet at the Sonoma Valley Film Festival is serene. Or temporarily happy, at least. The movies are showing, the wine is flowing freely, every other person you meet up here is loaded (or going out with someone who is), and the festival guests are being driven around in Porsche Cayenne SUV's, which retail for $75,000 and up. Nice ride, but the Porsche marketing guys should suck it in and show some heart and humanity and send 10 Porsche Cayenne's to Baghdad and give them away in a raffle drawing. Just do it, guys. You'll love yourselves the next morning.

I met Alexander Payne and his signifant actress partner Sandra Oh yesterday at a party. They're here to help bring attention to Mina Shum's LONG LIFE, HAPPINESS & PROSPERITY, which Sandra stars in. (She's mainly known for her regular role as "Rita" in HBO's ARLISS.). I didn't very much care for the film, frankly, but Sandra's excellent and so is Valerie Tian, the young actress who plays her daughter, Mindy.

I said very little to Alexander, except to report that I'd just written a piece about ANGER MANAGEMENT. "How bad is it?" he asked me. "You're hearing it stinks?," I said. "Yeah," he answered. "Well, it's not that bad," I responded. "I mean, it's not painful at all, really."

I saw Sandra's film at the Sebastiani Theatre, a beautiful old place that was first built in 1933 by one of the Sebastiani brothers who also started a local wine-making business. Like almost every other older, single-screen theatre in the country, the Sebastiani has fallen on hard times and is looking for donations to help stay afloat. The people to talk to about this are Roger Rhoten and his wife Diana, who manage the place. Go to their page at www.sebastianitheatre.com and visit the theatre when you're up here, and f you have any movie-loving rich friends tell them to write a check.

Festival program director Chris Gore is quote the social gadfly. He's at every party and every screening, and always with a big smile and a kind word. The gracious people who took over the festival a couple of years ago and have made it into the celebrity-magnet thing it is today are Mark and Brenda Lohmer, and they're doing a fantastic job. Mark's an especially likable guy. He was shuttling people around town yesterday in his own, slightly weathered SUV (a Ford Explorer, I think), and thereby eschewing the vaguely obnoxious Porsche Cayenne symbolism, which I found endearing.

Grain, or Not to Grain?

I ran a piece a couple of weeks ago saying I found the dirt-free and especially grain-free DVD of Billy Wilder's SUNSET BOULEVARD, which was created by Lowry Digital for Paramount Home Video, far preferable to the grain-heavy, more photochemically correct DVD of Nicholas Ray's IN A LONELY PLACE, assembled by Columbia TriStar Home Video's Grover Crisp.

In response to this, restoration maestro Robert Harris (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, SPARTACUS, et. al.) got back to me on Wednesday to explain the error of my views.

"Grain is not a 'byproduct of film -- it is the film," he began. "Original prints of SUNSET BLVD. are stunning, but look absolutely nothing like the digital version released on DVD. This DVD is pretty, but it is not SUNSET BLVD. You need to see a real print of SUNSET BLVD.. and then make your comparison, understanding that the gray scale has been corrupted along with resolution.

"IN A LONELY PLACE, on the other hand, is a proper representation of what this film looked like. Grover Crisp has created a product true to the original and the intent of the filmmakers.

"The only reason that films have survived the last century is that they are on film. Had they been on digital, they would have been a different product. And would now not be. What you seem to be saying is that a painting by impressionist Georges Seurat would look better if it didn't have all those annoying dots. The dots are the painting." -- Robert Harris

I replied, "I get the Seurat analogy, Bob -- very astute, by the way -- but the fact remains, in my humble opinion, that some scenes in Grover's IN A LONELY PLACE DVD appear to me like they're happening inside a lovingly restored, photochemically-correct Iraqi sandstorm, especially compared to the squeaky-clean appearance of John Lowry's SUNSET BLVD.

"I would hope that all worthy films would be restored on film and made to look exactly the way they did when they first played in theatres, with all the grain intact and the way their creators knew them. But we're talking DVD's here. Grover did the 'right thing" when he restored and mastered IN A LONELY PLACE for DVD, yes, but I didn't really enjoy watching it -- not the way I did SUNSET BOULEVARD, at least.

"All that historically correct grain vaguely bothered me, and I offer no apologies for this reaction. Why should I tow the purist line and say, 'Ahh, this is so much better because it doesn't look as sharp or clean as one of Lowry's DVDs' when the plain truth is that my eyes prefer the Lowry? They just do. I was born and raised on the farm, yes, but things are different now that I've seen Paris. And I grew up with grain. I've been watching it for decades in repertory movie houses, and I don't like it.

"Grain is film, yes, but when it comes to watching classic black-and-white flicks on DVD, I say flush those little pain-in-the- ass granules down the drain...flush 'em and forget 'em!"

Mr. Harris read my reply, sucked in his breath, exhaled, and wrote the following:

"What your letter means, with all due respect, is that you are a corrupted video viewer. You have been won over by the dark side. When one removes grain, there can be a certain amount of image interpolation, much like line-doubling. There is also a loss of resolution as at a certain point, there is no information.

"Cinematographers, as opposed to videographers, paint with light on a canvas of light-sensitive silver halide crystals, which make up the exposed (recorded) image. Videographers paint with lines of electrical energy of varying widths. There is nothing wrong with this, as there is nothing wrong with transferring a filmed image to video.

"The problem which is beginning to affect the way that some of you look at film, and yes, I'm pointing at you as I write, is that your personal desire to have things nice and pretty and grain-free is simply not that way that directors and cinematographers created their works.

"IN A LONELY PLACE is not a grainy film. Want to see grain? Take a look at the flashback in Hitchcock's VERTIGO, derived from fifth and sixth-generation elements because nothing better existed. Here you have ugly, inconsistant grain, combined with over the top contrast. Not a pretty picture. And today this can be helped digitally.

"But what did Nick Ray intend to be seen on screen in his 1950 noir drama? A wide, beautiful gray scale with the appropriate grain structure holding together the image. Had he wished to film it otherwise, he (and Columbia) were perfectly capable of filming in virtually grainless, soft, lush three-strip Technicolor. But that would have been a different film.

"Which brings us back to the way in which Grover. Crisp decided to work with these images. He restored and kept the original grain. He restored and kept the original contrast ratios. Had he removed the grain, the film would no longer have been Nicholas Ray's IN A LONELY PLACE.

"Beyond everything else, although Columbia owns the copyright to this film and for all intents and purposes has the right to burn the original negative, fine grains, dupes and all prints, they have chosen to honor the original intentions of the filmmaker half a century ago. They have gone out of their way and spent the money to make this film look right.

"You can go into a theatre and view a new 35mm print of IN A LONELY PLACE and it will look much like it did at its premiere. The same cannot be said of SUNSET BLVD. And while one must give Paramount leeway here, as they had no original negative or fine grains, there are ways to make this film look as it did in 1950 in all its original glory. And an original print of SUNSET BLV. is a glorious thing.

"That's not the route taken however, and we have, in the Lowry Digital DVD version, a SUNSET BLVD. which was restored with all the right intentions, but it is not the film as directed by Billy Wilder nor photographed by John Seitz, a superb cinematographer with over 150 films to his credit.

"There is no doubt that many people will find it pretty and it does make a lovely DVD, but are we now going to remove those dots from the Seurat's digitally and straighten the sky and stars as created by Paul Gaugain? Why not digitally correct the Picassos? Changing a film's grain structure, which is its prime atomic particle, is precisely the same as colorizing.

"To be crystal clear, there is nothing wrong with removing minus and plus density dirt, scratches, tears and misc. detritus from film. There is nothing wrong, if while using a digital tool (and I do use digital tools) you have to remove or change the overall grain structure to make shots work better together. But you put the original grain back where you found it as it was originally photographed after the work has been done.

"While I love working photochemically and photo-optically, I also take great pleasure in being able to work with an image in restoring a missing color record or making digital repairs. But all of this can be accomplished while still working with the original grain structure. As someone who loves film as I know that you do, I must assume that you have seen too many dupe prints of classics with the wrong grain.

"I'll repeat myself. IN A LONELY PLACE is not a grainy film. But it wasn't shot on video either." -- R.A.H

Wells to Harris: "I agree and bow down to everything you say, but I still hate those little sand pebbles, and as far as DVD masterings are concerned I don't see why it's better to watch a less-clear, less razor-sharp picture just because 1950 or 1946 or 1955 film technology didn't allow for cleaner, less grainy images. Lowry is working on a grain-free CASABLANCA, and I'm frankly looking very much forward to it."

Iraqi Backpedal

"I couldn't agree with you more about the feeling of watching the Allies come through Europe all over again. There was a picture of our guys sitting around one of Saddam's palaces that to me was very reminiscent of the recent miniseries BAND OF BROTHERS when the GI's entered Hitler's mountasintop retreat. As far as those lefties in Hollywood go, I could care less what they have to say. Anyone who doesn't support the idea of people being freed from a dictatorship from the beginning, or, worse, can't recognize a dictator when they see one, is just an ass. Being the son of a Cuban nationale who was lucky to get out of Cuba before Fidel fully took over, I understand how those people feel to a certain degree. Still having relatives living under that dictator, I had nothing but tears of joy for the Iraqi people. God bless them and may they never have to go through it again." -- David Ocasio

"When did you become one of America's gung-ho, pro-imperialist hawks? You ask what the 'lefties' will have to say about those cheering Iraqis? Ask the Pope instead. Or the Methodists (Bush's faith) who opposed the war. Ask the Iraqis, who have a less tempered view than Fox News channel. Don't simplify an issue that's been even more simplified in this military-dominated media.

"Speaking as as a protestor, I'm thrilled the Iraqis are dancing free. Of course, I'm sorry for the 5000-plus dead, many of whom were women and children and don't get to kiss Bush's picture in supplication and gratitude.

"Nobody doubted Hussein was a monster (except those lefties like Reagan and Rumsfeld, who did bidness with Saddam thru the 80's and made sure the UN lifted sanctions against Iraq) but that doesn't justify an arrogant, corrupt administration ignoring international law (then complaining Iraq violated it!) and forcibly taking over a country for reasons that have NOTHING to do with liberation.

"To watch the US news media roll over like hungry dogs the past month has been a lesson in how easy it is to distract the already-limited American mind. If you think people should trust the same administration that's dismantled nuclear and environmental treaties, raped California with energy scams, and turned our surplus into a huge deficit all while education is sent into the toilet, well, no. I lived under Bush before he became prez and he scared me then.

"You think this is over? Read our leader's lying lips: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are next. And why? And are you ready to sacrifice your children in the name of men who have a history of lying to us? And what if the world one day decides the US needs a 'regime change'?" -- Christian Divine

Wells to Divine: All I said was, the lefties are going to have a hard time squaring their "war is not the answer" position with those video images of obviously ecstatic, cheering Iraqis. And John Kerry, the most likely Democratic Presidential candidate in '04, actually called for a U.S. "regime change" last week in a speech.