9/11 Pitch Meeting

Bill's two best lines: (a) "Actually, that makes 18 million of us" and (b) "They actually want us to reward them for the last eight years by giving them four more. Let's send them a message that will echo from the Rockies all across America: Thanks, but no thanks."

I'm sorry, but this "Biden's Under-Message Subtitled" video from 23/6 is funny. C'mon, it is.

Paul Schrader's Adam Resurrected has been selected to be shown at the Telluride Film Festival, which sorta kicks off tomorrow night but more precisely on Friday morning. I don't believe that Tom Luddy or Gary Meyer would invite this film to their festival if it (a) didn't have merit and value, and (b) if it was any kind of relative of Jerry Lewis's The Day The Clown Cried ('71), which has been the rap against it in the columns. Better to reserve comment until people see it this weekend.

It's been explained that Schrader's film, based on Yoram Kaniuk's novel, is about Adam Stein, an inmate and former circus clown living in an asylum in Israel and looking back on his having agreed to entertain Jews during WWII as they were led to their deaths in the camps.

I'm told Jeff Goldlblum is quite good as Stein; William Dafoe plays Commandant Klein.

Richard Dreyfuss, who will probably kill as Dick Cheney in Oliver Stone's W, speaking earlier this afternoon during an MSNBC interview from Denver. "I think the last eight years have destroyed 200 years of respect [for this country]. I think the Republican Party is corrupt through and through. They have been in office too long. They are too adept at thievery and moving the Constitution into places it was never meant to go. I think they have an extraordinary ability to divide rather than unite." Has Walter Sobchak left the room? I think he has...cool.

"John Edwards admitted to the affair [with Rielle Hunter] but said he's not the father of her child -- Ann Coulter is. Republicans, of course, are outraged. 'A sex scandal? With a woman?'" -- from a Bill Maher video rant ("What I've Learned This Summer"), apparently taped for the "Real Time" re-debut this Friday on HBO.

"An anti-spy thriller in which nothing is at stake, no one acts with intelligence and everything ends badly. Those who relish it might treat it as the second coming of The Big Lebowski; those who don't might wonder at a story in which no character has a level head. " -- Hollywood Reporter critic Kirk Honeycutt, whose review was posted in today's edition (concurrent with Wednesday night's Venice Film Festival showing).

I read this Sarah Lyall N.Y. Times piece about drunken Brits in Crete two or three days ago, and I haven't been able to wipe the article's money term -- "alfreso oral sex contest" -- from my mind. Routine Joe Francis stuff on DVD, but reading it in the Times makes it seem almost....historic? On top of perverse, I mean.

Konstantinos Lagoudakis, the mayor of Malia, a northern coastal town on Crete, described the vacationing British youths as follows: "They scream, they sing, they fall down, they take their clothes off, they cross-dress, they vomit. It is only the British people -- not the Germans or the French."

"You make that sound, Keith...I can do the same to you, okay? That's what I thought...all right? And I said it." -- Chris Matthews to Keith Olbermann during yesterday's discussion about the Hillary Clinton speech (which hadn't been delivered at that point).

This morning a Huffington Post person described it thusly:

"Discussing Hillary Clinton's upcoming speech, Matthews began talking about women 's reactions to Hillary. His producers, likely wary of any more cries of sexism against the host and the network, presumably tried to get him to wrap, as he said, 'I'll wrap in a second, I'll wrap in a second.'

"Olbermann then tried to attribute Matthews' point about women voters to Rachel Maddow, to which Matthews said, 'Good ideas can be shared.'

"Then, when introducing Steny Hoyer, Olbermann mocked Matthews for '[going] off at the mouth' and made a hand gesture implying that Matthews talked forever.

"'You make that sound, Keith,' Matthews said. '"I can do the same to you, okay? That's what I thought...all right? That's what I thought. And I said it.'"

An excerpt from a panel discussion about the views of the rural anti-Obama contingent expected to vote in the coming election. No, seriously -- name the actor and the movie. No hints. Okay, one -- the film is famous and respected.

I'll always love Steven Soderbergh's Che. I'll be seeing it again at the Toronto Film Festival, which starts eight days hence. I'll be re-reviewing it when it opens theatrically. I'll buy the DVD some day. But the people behind the 100% non-existent press reach-out for Che have an odd Toronto attitude. By any basic rulebook, producers Laura Bickford and Benicio del Toro and French financier/sales agent Wild Bunch should be pushing their movie in Toronto, and they're really not doing that. Certainly not as we speak.

Benicio del Toro in Steven Soderbergh's Che

Right now, every moderately-funded film going to Toronto has hired a p.r. outfit and is doing what it can right now to stir press interest and get some festival traction...except Che. It's beyond bizarre. It's like they have some kind of death wish.

Soderbergh's fine, historic and domestically un-sold film is showing in Toronto at the end of next week and nobody, it seems, is repping it p.r.-wise, nobody can tell me anything about how to set up chats or even photo ops with del Toro or Soderbergh in Toronto, and nobody --- not Benicio's publicist Robin Baum, not the folks at 42 West, not the Toronto Film Festival press office -- seems to know who's minding the store or what might the plan might be.

Every year dozens of mediocre movies go to Toronto with p.r. companies fully hired, interviews being scheduled, parties scheduled and so on. And yet Che, a brilliant, ahead-of-the-curve, thinking-person's epic, is doing nothing to reach out to people like me.

I really love Che. I think it's rich, wonderfully believable, profound. I've written about Peter Buchman's scripts early on, about the Cannes showings, etc. Trying to do what I can to spread the word because I believe and I care and I want to see it get at least a decent reception when it opens in whatever form or format. And yet Bickford and Wild Bunch and del Toro have shown all the approachability and reaching-out that one might expect from Columbian drug dealers looking to hide news of their latest shipment.

What's going on, for God's sake? 42 West may finally be signed, apparently, and a Canadian publicist may have been approached or hired for Canadian press but who waits until only a few days before the start of the Toronto Film Festival to hire a publicist?

It's as if the Che team got together a few weeks ago and said, "Okay, what can we do to make it seem as if we have a serious leave-us-alone attitude problem? No p.r. reps hired -- check. No reaching out to press -- check. No scheduled one-on-ones, photos ops or round-tables -- check. No parties -- check. No communication to press through intermediaries of any kind -- check."

The Che gang pulled the same thing before Cannes -- no p.r., no reach-outs, leave us alone, etc. Who operates like this? Who makes a near-great movie, submits it to a major festival and does everything they can to create a muted reception?

I hope Che wins more film-critic fans during the Toronto Film Festival. I hope it opens commercially some day. Or if not theatrically, I hope at least it will get shown on HBO. I'll be seeing it a second time in Toronto because I want to re-immerse. But I've pretty much given up as far as trying to help. If the Che forces want to say "well, we were just about to make a Toronto move but Jeffrey Wells flew off the handle," fine. Because I haven't flown off the handle. I've called, e-mailed, reached out and waited for a reply with the patience of Job for many, many weeks.

I've had it. I quit. Life is short and I don't care any more.

Variety's Todd McCarthy has slammed the Coen brothers' "arch and ungainly" Burn After Reading, which opened the Venice Film Festival this evening. (McCarthy saw it in L.A. yesterday.) You have to take reviews of comedies with a grain of salt, so this isn't necessarily an indication of Big Trouble. Did McCarthy like Intolerable Cruelty? (I loved it.) I remember he didn't care for the stoner humor in The Big Lebowski at all. I've spoken, however, to another critic who saw it and was asking himself as he watched the first two acts, "Why am I not laughing?"

McCarthy is calling it a reversion to "sophomoric snarky mode" -- a fallback, he means. "A dark goofball comedy about assorted doofuses in Washington, D.C., only some of whom work for the government, the short, snappy picture" -- 95 minutes, all in -- "tries to mate sex farce with a satire of a paranoid political thriller, with arch and ungainly results. Major star names might stoke some mild B.O. heat with older upscale viewers upon U.S. release Sept. 12, but no one should expect this reunion of George Clooney and Brad Pitt to remotely resemble an Ocean's film commercially.

"A seriously talented cast has been asked to act like cartoon characters in this tale of desperation, mutual suspicion and vigorous musical beds, all in the name of laughs that only sporadically ensue. Everything here, from the thesps' heavy mugging to the uncustomarily overbearing score by Carter Burwell and the artificially augmented vulgarities in the dialogue, has been dialed up to an almost grotesquely exaggerated extent, making for a film that feels misjudged from the opening scene and thereafter only occasionally hits the right note.

"The Coens' script, which feels immature but was evidently written around the same time as that for No Country or Old Men, is just too fundamentally silly, without the grounding of a serious substructure that would make the sudden turn to violence catch the viewer up short. Nothing about the project's execution inspires the feeling that this was ever intended as anything more than a lark, which would be fine if it were a good one. As it is, audience teeth-grinding sets in early and never lets up.

"Incidental niceties crop up, to be sure. The Coens' economy of storytelling is in evidence, as is their unerring visual sense, this time in league with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki; a low-angle shot of Harry, knife in hand, lingers especially. The date montages are cute, and the facial reactions of JK Simmons, playing a CIA boss more dedicated to avoiding fuss and bother than to getting to the bottom of things, are once again priceless. But on any more substantive level, Burn After Reading is a flame-out."

"I've been to a lot of conventions, but this [one] has a vibe so weird and jittery, so at odds with the early thrilling, fairy dust feel of the Obama revolution, that I had to consult with Mike Murphy, the peppery Republican strategist and former McCain guru. 'What is that feeling in the air?' I asked him. 'Submerged hate,' he promptly replied. Ah, yes...now I recognize that sulfurous aroma." -- from Maureen Dowd's 8.27 N.Y. Times column, "High Anxiety in the Mile-High City."

Okay, I may have given in to excessive rancor and bitterness earlier today. Hillary Clinton's speech tonight was much better than I thought it might be -- classy, tough, passionate, persuasive. When she asked Hillary supporters if their work during the primaries was (a) about her or (b) about the values she and they believed in....that was a closer. She did what she had to do, but she also delivered a great speech. Hats off.

Erica Gibson's Woodchipper, acrylic on panel, 17 x 13 inches, framed -- $450.00. Interested parties can forget it because it's been sold. The generally interested should e-mail the Crazy 4 2 Artwork guys at gallery1988@aol.com.

It is axiomatic that a major dramatic film about any ethnic group is going to draw the ire of some p.c. group claiming to defend the cultural-political interests of said group, blah blah, because of a perceived tribal slur, blah blah. Not interesting! I can feel the slumber instinct building inside as I write this. Fight it! Fight it!

So it really means nothing that the Council on American-Islamic Relations recently complained that Alan Ball's Towelhead (which I saw and reviewed at last year's Toronto Film Festival) is using a "racial and religious slur [that is] commonly used in a derogatory manner against people of the Muslim faith or Arab origin," blah blah.

The movie is a good sit, though. Intriguing, different, a head-turner. Based on Alicia Eran's period novel of the same name, Towelhead (Warner Independent, 9.12 in New York and LA) is "a sturdy, complex character drama that's 100% deserving of respect," I wrote last year when it was called Nothing Is Private. "It's obviously one of the most original, daring films about adolescent sexuality ever delivered by a quasi-mainstreamer. It's also a sharp look at racism (and not just the American-bred kind) and a sobering portrait of the rifts and tensions between American and Middle-Eastern mindsets.

"And all of this out of a fairly simple period drama, set in a Houston suburb around the time of the Gulf War, about a 13 year-old half-Lebanese, half-Irish girl named Jasira (Summer Bishil), and what happens as she gradually decides, under the fiercely oppressive watch of her Lebanese dad (Peter Macdissi), to explore/ indulge her budding sexuality with two older guys -- a randy but nice-enough African-American high schooler in his mid teens (Eugene Jones) and a sleazy neighborhood dad in his early 40s (Aaron Eckhart).

Towelhead "is not exploitation...not even a little bit. It's a smartly written thing with all kinds of intrigues and counterweights built into each character, and an earnest residue of humanity seeping through at the finish.

"Even Eckhart's character, scumbag that he is, has tics and shadings that make him more than just a thoughtless statutory rapist. Even Jasira's dad, a dictatorial racist thug of the first order, comes off as somewhat sympathetic at times. And each one is his own way cares for Jasira. And despite the dark sexual currents (and as odd as this sound), it's also a fairly amusing film. Really. It's really boils down to being a 'neighborhood folks and their quirks' movie that...okay, is a little bit icky in two or three scenes but isn't nearly as icky in a general sense as you might expect."

Speaking to Politico's John F. Harris about the rah-rah-Obama speeches being given by Bill and Hillary Clinton tonight and Wednesday night, a veteran of the Clinton White House who remains close to both of them said "they are both going to do what they have to do...that does not mean they will enjoy it."

In other words, the words in their speeches aren't in question; it's the tone and the pizazz that Billary will put into the delivery that people will be examining tonight (and tomorrow night) with a fine tooth comb.

If Hillary feels she can deliver tonight's speech with 80% passion levels without anyone accusing her of being a wee bit half-hearted, she'll give it 80%. And if she senses on the podium tonight that she can give it 70% without anyone saying she's half-hearted, she'll give it 70%. But there's no way in hell she'll give it 100% or even 90% -- no way. Because she'd be very much at peace with saying "I told you so" on 11.5.08 if and when Obama loses. She'd love to run again in 2012. All she has to do is play the Obama game in subtle cutthroat fashion. Put on the show and do just enough so people can't accuse her (or her husband) of undermining, blah, blah. Make no mistake -- she's The Beast and always will be.

Joseph Costigan, a political director for a union based in Dearborn, Michigan, called Unite Here, has told N.Y. Times columnist Bob Herbert that "we've been talking with staff in different parts of the Midwest, and we're all struggling to some extent with the problem of white workers who will not vote for Barack Obama because of his color. There's no question about it. It's a very powerful thing to get over for some folks."

We've all wondered and worried about the Undercurrent of Ugliness that lives in the hearts of lunchbucket Americans out there when it comes to race, and Tuesday, November 4th -- Election Day -- may, I fear, show statistically just how ugly this country really and truly is.

Think of that episode on Boris Karloff's Thriller called "The Cheaters" -- a pair of magic glasses that shows what people are really thinking and feeling inside -- and how it ended with the lead actor putting them on and then looking at his own reflection in a mirror, and screaming and clawing his face over what he saw. His screams, I fear, will be America's screams on the evening of Tuesday, 11.4.

The right wing talk-backers on HE can spew their usual diseased crap, but when people say they prefer this or that candidate because of any number of factors, fine. Voting records, loyalties, character issues, intellectual capacity, whatever. But when it all boils down to one thing -- when they say "I won't vote for candidate A because of the tint of his skin and the shape of his nose and the suspected allegiances that we associate with people of his sort"...that's simply evil.

As Chris Matthews said last night, Barack and Michelle worked hard and played by the rules and built their lives into a kind of American Dream, and for people out there to just wave it away and say "naaah, he's a Muslim and not one of us so I'm not voting for him" -- that is just flat-out sickening.

Costigan's statement points again to the increasing likelihood that the 11.4 vote will be a squeaker, and that Obama has a decent chance of losing if the Generation of Shame (i.e., the under 25s) doesn't vote for the Illinois Senator in sufficient numbers to counter-balance the 55-and-over racists.

Aaah, but will they? The youth vote is supposed to be energized this year like never before, with a good 75% or 80% favoring Obama....something like that. But we all know what happens when you place your bets on the youth vote, right? We certainly found out what the youth vote is worth in '04. That's why we call them the Generation of Shame 'round these parts.

"Talk for more than a few minutes with an Obama supporter in a white middle-class or working-class area and you'll hear about a friend or relative or co-worker who has a real problem with the candidate. When Jack Davis's wife, Joan, who also plans to vote for Senator Obama, was asked about Democrats that she knew who would not vote for him, she replied, "My mother! She's 85 years old. I'm sorry to say, but she will not vote for him."

"Costigan believes -- hopes -- that the number of people holding [racially negative] views is relatively small, and that Mr. Obama, now with the help of Senator Biden, can surmount that obstacle.

"Surmounting it will be tough. Not only do the polls show this to be a close race, but the polls, when it comes to Senator Obama, cannot be trusted. It is frequently the case that a statistically significant percentage of white voters will lie to pollsters -- or decline to state their preference -- in races in which one candidate is black and the other white.

"After many years of watching black candidates run for public office, and paying especially close attention to this year's Democratic primary race, I've developed my own (very arbitrary) rule of thumb regarding the polls in this election:

"Take at least two to three points off of Senator Obama's poll numbers, and assume a substantial edge for Senator McCain in the breakdown of the undecided vote. Using that formula, Barack Obama is behind in the national election right now."

It is probably inevitable that Sally Hawkins, the cheerful and indefatigable Poppy in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky (Miramax, 10.10), will be talked up as a Best Actress nominee once the film starts showing around. (It opened in England last April and came out last week on DVD over there.) An elementary-school teacher who happy-vibes just about everything and everyone, Polly is an unstoppable alpha dispenser -- spirited, effervescent -- and Hawkins certainly inhabits her whole-hog.

Sally Hawkins in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky

She carries Happy-Go-Lucky, she carries its spirit, and she does handle herself well in the sad-shock scenes at the end of the film with Eddie Marsan, the driving instructor with the correct manner and ferociously uptight, anti-immigrant attitude. In fact, the last 15 to 20 minutes contain the best stuff in the film, and I throughly respect Hawkins for her performance in this section. She handles her scenes with quiet maturity and resigned grace.

But her Poppy character epitomizes a sort of person I've never been able to tolerate -- the emotional fascist who's relentless about being happy, smiling and sparkly, but who also insists -- here's the problem -- on forcing her bubbliness upon others (acquaintances, strangers, anyone) with the ultimate idea of converting them to their way of looking at life, or at least giving them a contact high to take home.

What especially dictatorial about smiley-faced brownshirts like Poppy is their determination to gently bully you into submission. If you don't get on board with the mutual-alpha, they'll interrogate you like Laurence Olivier's Zell (the Nazi character in Marathon Man), looking at you with a quizzical grin and asking, "Are you happy?" or "Having a bad day?" Speaking from experience, I can advise that the best response is "I was feeling pretty good, actually, until you asked me that."

Eddie Marsan, Hawkins

Imagine if Poppy was a born-again Christian asking total strangers, "So have you accepted Jesus as your personal savior?" and "Would you like to be saved?" The police would be called, she'd be cuffed and thrown into a van and taken down to the station. But there's no recourse with the happy-happies.

I hate people who ask me if I'm happy because, of course, they're not really asking me that. They're saying they've observed my behavior, examined my vibe and decided that I just don't have the right peppy-happy attitude, and that I need to adjust it right away so that it pleases them. I do meet these people from time to time. They're like Moonies or Hara Krishna devotees -- they've got the beautiful inner force inside them, and they know they've got that wondrous glow in their faces, and they're determined to beat you over the head with it until you're on your knees, bloody and begging them to stop.

Poppy feels like a kind of symbol of the whole happy-face movement of the '70s, which for me represented a kind of alpha-vibe fascism that you could sense every so often in certain liberal-minded circles. Get with the positive attitudes or else! The late George Carlin once said on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" that "when fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jack-boots. It will be Nike sneakers and smiley shirts. Smiley-smiley."

The French poster for Leigh's film, called Be Happy over there, has a slogan at the bottom: "Adoptez la Poppy attitude!"

The term "emotional fascism" was first coined by Elvis Costello in the '70s, and it's real, you bet. There's a scene when Poppy's friend Zoe says, "You can't make everyone happy" and Poppy replies, "There's no harm in trying that Zoe, is there?" I am here to stand up and say that yes, there is harm in it, and would all the Poppy girls of the world please refrain from ever doing so again in my presence? It's oppressive. It's like being beaten with Mao's little happy-face book during the Great Cultural Revolution.

There are many of us, I'm presuming, who look upon cheery, cock-eyed optimists as people you sometimes have to speak to at parties -- sometimes it's better just to suffer quickly and get it over with so you can move on -- but if you see them coming down the street you cross over to the other side and duck into a book store or something, and you stay there for a good 15 minutes, just to be safe.

Cut together by the intrepid souls at 23/6...hats off.

Just got back from Mike Leigh's Happy Go Lucky, a movie about a quirky, plucky lady (Sally Hawkins) given to laying spirited, feel-good emotional fascism upon others, including the audience. If this sort of thing lights you up, you may do cartwheels. (As Patrick Goldstein did.) If you find it oppressive, as I did, you'll be in hell. And yet this is a very assured, self-aware film. Respect must be paid to Leigh, who knows his characters and their world and precisely how to make it all unfold in just the right way.

I didn't have time to post Ted Kennedy's devastating Denver speech earlier this evening. I haven't at this moment seen Michelle Obama's speech, but here's almost all of it.

Four paintings by Jeff Ramirez -- "Verzweiflung", "Geschmerzt", "Kampf", "Entsetzt." 5 x 7 inches each. $475.00 each or $1,800.00 for all 4. Interested parties should e-mail the Crazy 4 2 Artwork guys at gallery1988@aol.com.

Politico's Jeffrey Ressner has posted a short profile of Cedering Fox, a special friend of yours truly and currently the voice of the Democratic National Convention in Denver. The best line, a description of Fox's voice, is right at the top: "Soothing and smart. Slightly sexy. Raspy, too."

Since winning his Best Actor Oscar for The Pianist ('03), Adrien Brody has appeared in one underwhelming so-so after another -- The Village, The Jacket, King Kong, Hollywoodland, The Darjeeling Limited. I don't mean to be snide or churlish, but I've lately come to imagine that there's something called the Adrien Brody curse, or an equation between the poor guy being in a film and that film being a problem. Brody is a fine actor; his performances are always rich. But he has this thing about appearing in films that are either gloomy indies or commercial head-scratchers.

Adrien Brody, Rachel Weisz, Mark Ruffalo

I'd like to believe that his latest pic, The Brothers Bloom, will break the pattern, although I'm a little concerned by the light caperish tone of the ads and the trailer. Here's what gave me particular pause -- an 8.24 New York magazine profile by Logan Hill of Bloom costar Rachel Weisz.

"In the globe-trotting con-artist movie The Brothers Bloom, two lifelong grifters (Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo) devise double-crosses so fabulously complex that they begin to lose track of where real life ends and the bamboozle begins," Hill begins. "To them, everything -- identity, love, friendship, death -- is a lie.

"Even the film's title is a classic bit of misdirection, because the movie isn't really about the guys, after all. It's about the marvelous mark they pursue: Penelope, a basket-case New Jersey millionairess with a thousand talents and just as many fabulous outfits. And the saucer-eyed, seemingly guileless actor playing Penelope -- Rachel Weisz, as you have definitely never seen her -- steals the film right out from under the brothers' noses."

See what I mean? Sounds frothy, negligible.

Another story about ThinkFilm and David Bergstein stiffing people they owe money to? How many have we read along these lines?

Two days ago N.Y. Times columnist Frank Rich wrote that it's time for Barack Obama to retire "change we can believe in" and launch a new campaign theme. That seems to be the general consensus -- Obama 2.0 (and it had better be something that's analagous to Windows XP over Windows 98) needs to begin on Thursday night. And I can't imagine what he could say that would really make a serious difference in perception except...well, what about saying "it ain't me, babe -- it's us"?

In July 1960 JFK said the following in his Democratic Convention acceptance speech: "Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom promised our nation a new political and economic framework. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal promised security to those in need. But the New Frontier, of which I speak, is not a set of promises -- it is a set of challenges. It sums not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them."

It would be great to hear something along these lines from Obama -- no promises, no magic wands, grim up, we can do it -- but the conventional wisdom is that the teletubbies are so submerged in their WALL*E lifestyles that being challenged to do greater things would be, like....whuhdesay?

As I wrote earlier this morning, the average middle-class American is (and has been for some time) totally drunk on tech-comfort martinis, and he/she really doesn't want to know or hear about anything that interferes with the buzz-on. That's because the narcotic effects of a flush 21st Century comfort life (SUV, iPhone, LCD, Blu-ray, prescription mood medication...the whole schmeer) is far, far more enveloping and reality-diminishing than the lah-lah lifestyle of the French aristocracy in the late 1700s or the family of Czar Nicholas II before the Bolshevik revolution.

Nonetheless, I think Obama needs to go for it anyway by saying "it's up to you," "a nation is only as great as its citizens," and "I can't deliver any magic potion -- no president can -- but we can make things better if we all decide to give it up some and pull together, and that means living in the here-and-now of the 21st Century and engaging in the world as it is, not as it was, and that means electing a president who -- yes! -- uses a computer and knows from Mac Powerbooks, and it also means fighting the corporations tooth and nail for the soul of our country, and that means pushing back on the politics of greed and selfishness, now and forever."

The people who say they don't yet know Obama after 18 months of campaigning are either (a) Mongloid or (b) lying. We all know that "he doesn't share our values" is a racial code phrase, but anybody who's still claiming ignorance or serious uncertainty about the guy at this stage is basically saying he/she would rather not have Cleavon Little be the town sheriff. That's what it boils down to. The TV commentators rarely allude to, much less acknowledge, the ocean of racism that lives under this country's terra firma, particularly in the backwater areas. It's sorta kinda there, the media says, but not quite as much as you'd think. Bull. They're doing the old sidestep.

The people who believe John McCain is better equipped to handle the military and political challenges of the presidency are simply coming from a place of dedicated ignorance. McCain has shown time and again that he's doddering and fuzzy-brained, gets lots of things wrong, misremembers history, and is emotionally invested in bluster and aggression....and yet people say he's the guy they'd trust more in the Oval Office. It's insane, illogical. The real reason has to lie elsewhere.

Obama is far from perfect, but he's obviously brighter, sharper, less macho- belligerent and more in touch with the here-and-now world than McCain is capable of being (or willing to be). He has as much if not more experience than Abraham Lincoln had when he began his first term as President; ditto Woodrow Wilson and JFK. Older conservatives just don't like the idea of a black guy in the White House -- that's it. People are who and what they are, and you can't wave a magic wand and change human nature. My mother -- well read, loves the arts, never a conservative -- used to voice racist reservations about Obama when she first heard about him.

A guy on a Yahoo answer page wrote fhe following about two weeks ago, to wit: "Experience is evidentally not a reliable measure. When judging presidential performance vs. their experience, it's all over the map. No reasonable correlation between experience and performance.

"Of course, the same is true in business. For example, most of the computer companies that are now mega-corporations were started by kids in garages.

"I myself got hired by a very big, very famous company into a pretty important position with no experience, I just convinced them to do it. I wound up being one of their two top performing executives and brought very significant turnaround to several departments in the company. No experience.

"Nowadays, I hire people because of what they can do, not what they have done (or not).

"If experience was so important, then only the top senators would have a chance in elections, the ones that have been in the senate for 25 years or more. Has this been the case? Ever?

"Experience does not matter, either to performance nor to the American people. Because we're smarter than that. Experience doesn't guarantee a person -- it just tells you about what type of person they are."

An AICN poster named Dave Feldman has posted a very positive reaction to an early screening of Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road in White Plains, New York, and that's fine. But the guy doesn't know how to spell "bawling" -- in his mind it's "balling" -- and this, I feel, opens up a whole universe of caution and interpretation about the world of Mr. Feldman. If you don't know how to spell "bawling," what else don't you know? What other aspects of the human condition have you misread or missed out on?

"The movie's a killer," he begins. "Clear the decks -- this is a great ride." Well and good, but then Feldman feels obliged to describe costar Kate Winslet as Mendes' "beautiful wife" and again you go "what?" I don't trust anyone who introduces any artist as someone's beautiful wife or handsome husband. Artists stand on their own or they're nothing, and information about who they're married to or living with is a waste of breath in a review, so obviously one needs to say "watch it!" when reading anyone who brings this up.

Winslet plays "an idealistic wife in 1950s Connecticut who realizes that her dreams and freedom have withered away," he writes, "[so] she persuades her husband, the debonair Leonardo DiCaprio, to rediscover the thing that made their marriage vital." Winslet, he believes, has "never been better." Okay, fine.

"I won't give away too much, but let's just say that DiCaprio goes along for the ride for a bit, but soon reality sets in and they've got to make some life-altering changes. Let's just say not only was DiCaprio's character balling [sic] by the end, but most of the audience was too."

"The performances are absolutely stunning, he explains, "true powerhouse roles like we haven't since in a lonnng time. I bet comparisons to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof are inevitable, and dare I say that DiCaprio and Winslet outshine Taylor and Newman." Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman's performance, he means, in a not-very-good adaptation of a so-so play. The guy is referencing a 50 year-old movie that feels classic to some because of the current Broadway stage revival? Puzzling.

This, I say, is the third and final nail in the coffin. "Balling" plus "Mendes' beautiful wife' plus Cat on a Hot Tin Roof...over and out.

Another AICN guy who called himself "Jay Diggler" (meaning...what, that he fancies himself a ladies' man because his member is almost as large as Dirk Diggler's?) liked it also -- a little bit less than Feldman, but he's a more explicit writer and seems more thoughtful and circumspect.

The film "clocked in at about 2 and 1/2 hours but it never felt that long," he writes. "It starts off with the end of a play that April is starring in and shows Frank's disappointing face. Turns out this play is in a local high school and April [we learn] never became the actress she really wanted to be. This scene culminates in an intense screaming match between the two and Frank punching the car followed by the credits or Revolutionary Road.

"This sets the mood for how this movie is going to be. April is a failed actress/depressed housewife and Frank is a failure working at a crappy job he hates [because he feels he's] becoming his dad.

"DiCaprio and Winslet give Oscar worthy perfomances throughout the film. Their fights are intense; one in particular gave me the chills. You can see the anguish behind April's eyes as she goes on each day, hiding the fact that she's miserable. When April comes up with the idea to move to France and start over, you can see happiness reenter both of their lives and you really hope that everything works out for them. Those who've read the book know that this is only wishful thinking . For those that haven',I don't want to spoil the results." You don't?

Diggler believes that Mendes "really blew" the ending, though. "They could've had a perfect ending that left you feeling for the characters but they tacked on some scenes at the end that were unnecessary and they failed to give you any time to process what happened to the characters. [This is] a missed opportunity that I hope is corrected in the final cut. I made sure to detail my problems with the ending in the sheet that they passed around to everyone.

"Overall though I really enjoyed the film, the acting kept the movie afloat and I'm sure we'll see a couple names from this movie [among] the Oscar nominations. For Sam Mendes [this is] not as good as American Beauty but still a great job."

You sure feel it the next morning, you bet. Stiff and aches galore. Swollen left hip with scab. Aching left rib area, hurts when I breathe in deeply. Left elbow slightly swollen, slightly painful. Swollen knob, scab on my left knee. In short, the usual stuff when you've suffered minor impact trauma (i.e., the kind you don't need to go to the hospital for). I'll be in decent shape by next weekend. Okay, maybe more like seven days but certainly by the time I leave for Toronto on 9.3.

Torrance and Lundegaard family portraits by Arkansas-based Kirk Demarais

Yesterday afternoon Politico party girl reporter Anne Schroeder Mullins noted that "when Barack Obama and Joe Biden made their big appearance Saturday, Biden walked out to Bruce Springsteen's The Rising. It seems that will -- or already has -- become the new Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow. And it strikes the right working-class notes."

For me there's only one Rising/Springsteen song, only one anthem that seems to really know something true and fundamental about the American working-class, or at least about the soul and melancholia it seemed to have for that brief period after 9.11 -- Nothing Man. No campaign would have the character to use it as a theme song, but it's such a beauty, such a keeper.

After tapping out a link to last night's discord-in-Denver story by Politico's John F. Harris and Mike Allen, two HE talk-backers gave me pause -- "hepwa" and "dinther" by name -- and then two e-mails came in with a counter-balance effect.

One, from HE contributor Moises Chiullan, reminded me that "Politico and other outlets have to create stories and will selectively show Clinton-Obama acrimony and separatism when, according to Clinton supporters I know who are in Denver, there is a lot less PUMA-style division at work."

The other came from MSNBC's First Read, to wit: "With so many of Hillary Clinton's most ardent supporters in Denver, is the political press corps here in danger of over-hyping Obama's problem with Hillary backers? Yes, our most recent NBC/WSJ poll showed that Obama has yet to win some of them over, and that (in part) explains why he hasn't pulled away from McCain. But a brand-new Washington Post/ABC poll also had Obama getting more Clinton support than he's ever received since she dropped out of the race back in June.

"No doubt Obama still has some work to do, and he has two-plus months -- including this convention -- to make the sale. But the point we're trying to make is that perhaps the Democratic Party is more unified than PUMA-on-the-street interviews might suggest.

"Indeed, today's New York Times/CBS poll of Dem convention delegates probably has it right: 60% of Hillary's delegates enthusiastically support Obama, 31% support him with reservations or because he's the nominee, and 5% don't support him at all. But the Clinton folks will have an impact on the media narrative this week. In fact, they already they have -- see Ed Rendell at the media confab yesterday and today's Politico piece by Harris and Allen."

The Clintons are acting like their old fiendish selves again. Damn those two to hell, and I don't really mean "their people" --- I mean them. If Democratic politics was the mafia, Obama operatives would be drawing straws as to who gets to work things out with the hit man.

Rope of Silicon's Brad Brevet calls this international trailer for Steven Soderbergh's Che: El Argentino a "high quality" thing...really? It looks muddy to me. It doesn't even look decent. What's the deal with the materials on this film, Wild Bunch? Trying to shave costs?

Please take notice of the train-going-off-the-track shot. It's a quick one, but it's not CGI -- it's a real, full-sized train really going off the rails. I asked Soderbergh at the Che press conference in Cannes if this is the first train-wipeout shot using verite footage since John Frankenheimer's The Train ('64). Whatever the truth, he didn't want to get into it. He went "no, no, no, no...I don't know."

The Toronto Film Festival starts a week from Thursday -- 11 days from now. This morning I took my first stab at coming up with a short list. 40 films, I mean, which I'd like to see and write about these over a nine-day period. But I'll probably only see two thirds. The truth is that I usually see about 25 TIFF films over nine days, 30 if I really push it.

I probably won't be re-viewing anything I've already seen here (or intend to see here before 9.2), or anything I saw last May in Cannes -- Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Three Monkeys, Rod Lurie's Nothing But The Truth, Bill Maher and Larry Charles' Religulous, Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married, Mike Leigh's Happy Go Lucky, Gavin O'Connor's Pride and Glory, etc. And I've obviously marked off dozens of films that just don't seem or sound good enough.

In no particular order, my priorities are as follows: (1) Neil Burger's Lucky Ones, (2) Joel and Ethan Coen's Burn After Reading, (3) Daniel Burman's Empty Nest, (4) David Koepp's Ghost Town, (4) Ed Harris 's Appaloosa, (5) Guillermo Arriaga's The Burning Plain, (6) Steven Soderbergh's Che (yes, again -- in part because it's 14 or 15 minutes shorter than the Cannes version), (7) Stephan Elliott's Easy Virtue, (8) Barbet Schroeder's Inju, (9) Spike Lee's Miracle at St. Anna, and (10) Guy Ritchie's Rocknrolla.

And then comes (11) Darren Aronofsky's Wrestler, (12) Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno, (13) Kari Skogland's Fifty Dead Men Walking, (14) Michael McGowan's One Week, (15) Richard Eyre's The Other Man, (16) Jean-Francois Richet's Public Enemy Number One, (17) Gina Prince-Bythewood's Secret Life of Bees, (18) Ari Folman's Waltz With Bashir, (19) Phillipe Claudet's I've Loved You So Long, and (20) Laurent Cantet's Entre Les Murs.

The next ten are (21) Rian Johnson's Brothers Bloom, (22) Matteo Garrone's Gomorra, (23) James Stern and Adam Del Deo's Every Little Step, (24) Kathryn Bigelow's Hurt Locker, (25) Bruno Barreto's Last Stop 174, (26) Stephen Belber's Management, (27) Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles, (28) Peter Sollett's Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, (29) Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, and (30) Matt Tyrnauer's Valentino.

The final group is made up of (31) Max Farberbock's Woman in Berlin, (32) Jerzy Skolimowski's Four Nights with Anna (which I missed in Cannes), (33) Olivier Assayas' Heure de Ete, (34) Nigel Cole's $5 A Day, (35) Anthony Fabian's Skin, (36) Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige's I Want To See, (37) Scott McHehee and David Siegel's Uncertainty, (38) Cyrus Nowratesh's Stoning of Soraya M., (39) Brian Goodman's What Doesn't Kill You and (40) Kevin Rafferty's Harvard Beats Yale....even if it played at Manhattan's Film Forum last fall.

Anything I should add or subtract or make extra sure that I see? Open to all suggestions, warnings, kills.

Four days old, pre-Biden decision, still nutritious: "I lke Obama better because he's younger, cooler, smarter. The Democrats never do anything bold once they get the nomination. I'm still for Obama, but I have to tell you -- he's trying my patience. I thought he was going to be different. He didn't have that 'I'm going to blow it' look on his face. But he's doing the same thing as Kerry and Gore...to be sort of the lighter version of the Republican candidate."

This segment is good also.

I'll never forget standing on West 45th Street in January 1983 and eyeballing the almost side-by-side marquees for the Booth and the Plymouth (now the Gerald Schoenfeld theatre), and laughing quietly to myself about C.P. Taylor's Good being at the Booth and David Hare's Plenty playing at the Plymouth. And you know what? There are no online photos of this, probably the dopiest Broadway marquee juxtaposition in history.

In any event, Plenty re-appeared three years later as a Meryl Streep movie directed by Fred Schepisi. (My favorite line: "He proposed to me in a moment of weakness. Mine, I mean.") And yet it's taken Good 25 years to be made into a film.

The Good movie, directed by the Brazilian-born Vicente Amorim (who's rumored to be loosely related to Duchess director Saul Dibb), will show at the Toronto Film Festival. Viggo Mortensen plays Halder alongside Jason Isaacs, Mark Strong, Steven Mackintosh and Gemma Jones in the flick.

Written in '81, Good is regarded as Taylor's most successful play. It's about Halder, a thoughtful German professor whose wimpishness and gradual corruption leads to his involvement with National Socialsm in the 1930s. The point of the play is that Halder sees himself as a reasonable good guy even as he succumbs more and more to the swatztika. Are there are parallels in the current American political arena? Naaah.

I was kind of reminiscing just now about a visit to the northern Italian set of Renny Harlin and Sylvester Stallone's Cliffhanger, for a N.Y. Times profile called "Can Stallone Get A Grip?". I'd just come from the 1992 Cannes Film Festival. The crew was shooting at a very high elevation location in the scenic Dolomite mountains, which surround Cortina d'Ampezzo, a serene little skiing village that hosted the 1956 Winter Olympics and was also visited by For Your Eyes Only, the Roger Moore 007 film that came out in '81.

On or about 5.20.92 in the Italian Dolomites, about 90 minutes north of Venice -- a little below 30 degrees, elevation of 11,000 feet, maybe a bit less.

I've scanned the 8.23.92 Times article that resulted from the Cliffhanger visit --page #1, page #2.

I visited Cortina again about eight years ago, and was very dismayed to learn the town had gone to to hell due to its popularity with the wrong kind of American tourists -- i.e., bearish middle-aged couples from Texas and Kansas and Oklahoma who spoke too loudly in mixed company, wore repulsively-designed ski sweaters and seemed to enjoy dancing to awful-sounding Euro disco in the hotel lounges. I was sitting in a bar listening to this 60-ish bearded guy with a Houston accent talking about how "we really loved goin' to the Loove...the wife went back on her own the second day, all by her lonesome." That's it, I said to myself -- I'm never coming back here.

An hour ago I taxied over to the shop of a freelance mechanic named Dennis to pick up my motorcycle, which had suffered minor damage (shattered plexiglass, smashed turn signal) after a small parking-space accident happened a few days ago. Within seconds of leaving his place (about a block east of Fairfax) I could feel something wrong. The bike had no power due to some kind brake-lock problem with the front tire, which kept me from getting up to any speed. Imagine driving a car with your foot tromped on the brake and the emergency brake on -- it was like that.

Corner of Fairfax and Melrose, looking west.

I called Dennis as I was putting some air in the front tire (at a gas station at the corner of Fairfax and Melrose) and said, "Something's really wrong, man...the brake is locking the front wheel or something." He told me to bring it right back, so I pulled into Fairfax traffic heading north, but the bike would barely move. And then like a shot and right in the midst of a cluster of cars, the front wheel totally froze and the BMW and I both crashed onto the pavement, the bike sitting on my left leg and pinning me to the ground for a few seconds. No real damage to speak of -- a bloody left elbow and a scraped left knee plus my nice black dress pants torn in two places.

The cars behind me stopped in time, thank God (nobody was going too fast), and two guys got out and helped me pick the sucker up. I feel fine -- just bruised and cut. A slight ache in my rib cage on my left side, but nothing much. The body goes into mild shock when you have a sudden trauma like this, so I'll probably feel some more minor bruise pain and muscle ache when everything settles down. This only happened 40 minutes ago. Dennis couldn't figure what had happened, but he obviously screwed up big-time while doing the body work. He had planned to drive out to Lancaster to visit his wife in a rehab facility, so I told him to stay with that plan and we'll talk tomorrow. His friend (i.e., his wife's brother) drove me home.

I feel fine about being a motorcycle guy because I didn't get hit by anyone or make any mistakes -- the damn thing just froze up on me.

Update: The PDF file with an error concerning Steven Soderbergh's Che isn't from the Toronto Film Festival crew. It was put together by a dedicated Toronto film buff named Greg Cruse, who runs a fan site called TOfilmfest.ca. The guy "deserves a lot of credit," I'm told, "for sifting through all the festival info and putting it together in various bundles and for allowing it to be circulated for free."

The previous version of this post noted that "the titles and corresponding storylines of Steven Soderbergh's The Argentine and Guerilla, which together form his epic-length Che, have apparently been switched in a PDF super-file of all the Toronto Film Festival movies.

"Peter Buchman's script of The Argentine and the Part 1 film that showed in Cannes is/was about the successful Cuban revolution of '56 through late '58. The script of Guerilla, which corresponds the Part 2 of Che shown in Cannes, is/was about the 1966 and '67 Bolivian insurrection that ended in failure and Guevara's death. But the Toronto PDF file says that Guerilla is about Cuba and The Argentine is about Bolivia."

Watching these John McCain spots produces feelings of slap-shock, numbness, amazement. The irony is that the comical pandering will probably connect with some of the older PUMA types out there, no matter what Hillary Clinton says at the Denver podium (which we all suspect will be one thing verbally and quite another thing in terms of delivery and passion). "She won millions of votes but isn't on his ticket. Why? For speaking the truth. On his plans. On the Rezko scandal. On his attacks. The truth hurt and Obama didn't like it."

The Movie Gods are more or less pleased that Tropic Thunder beat out House Bunny this weekend, if only by a meager million bucks. Ben Stiller's Hollywood-actor satire made $16.1 million on its second weekend (for a cume of $65.7 million) compared to Bunny's $15.1 million. Then again, Bunny did what it did on 2714 screens compared to Thunder being on 3352 screens.

Another issue that critics will be sternly questioned about when they arrive at the pearly gates -- did you ever write a buoyant article-review that reflected positively on a film that you knew in your heart of hearts was absolute plastic trash because you fell in love with the lead performance?

It's part of the fate of film critics to face a special, sometimes brutal judgment at the gates of St. Peter when they die. Did they diss, ignore or under-value a film they knew was honorable in an exceptional, raising-the-bar sort of way -- a movie that unquestionably enhanced the lore of movies as providers of bracing reality baths and deliverers of spiritual revelation -- because it didn't provide familiar comfort in the form of reassuring "movie moments"?

Those critics who are found guilty will be denied entrance to heaven and sent back to earth to try again. Call me an Old Testament sort of guy if you want, but I believe that every critic or blogger-columnist who dismissed Steven Soderbergh's Che at Cannes last May because it was too long and wasn't reassuring enough in terms of conventional drama and emotional whatevs will, I humbly submit, face such a judgment. They will, however, be given a chance to redeem themselves in Toronto. Knowing of the human capacity for frailty and missing the boat, God has decided to cut them some slack.

"This is what I've always liked about New York...these little moments on the sidewalk, you can watch the buildings, you can feel the air, look at the people...and sometimes you meet somebody you feel you can talk to." -- line from trailer for New York, I Love You, the more-or-less-finished anthology film in the vein of Paris jet'aime (from the same producers) that will debut at the Toronto Film Festival.

Bruce Eder has written a perfunctory career-review piece about Miklos Rosza for Films in Review, dated 8.21. But it's a much better thing to simply listen to any one of Rosza's better compositions. Like this one. There's a very serene mood that seeps in towards the end, getting quieter and quieter over the last minute or so. Old-school composers were expected to keep the fanfare loud and brassy for films of this type; only artists like Rosza had the cojones to go the other way.

The French-language trailer for Christophe Barratier's Paris 36 (known in France as Faubourg 36) tells you it's an "audience film" -- broad, good natured, a little bit square and perhaps Amelie-like. Which is totally fine. Variety reported yesterday that Sony Pictures Classics has acquired distrib rights to the film in the U.S., Scandanavia and "Australasia," which is located to the northeast of Freedonia, the country featured in the Marx Bros. film Duck Soup. Barratier's film opens in France on 9.24.

Less than an hour ago in Springfield, Barack Obama introduced Joe Biden as "the next president...the next vice-president of the United States of America." Which simply meant that deep down BHO regards the Delaware Senator as genuine presidential timber should the unthinkable happen, and not just as a good second banana. Big deal.

Oren Shai's Films in Review interview with Israeli producer Menaham Golan reminded me of my service as an in-house publicity writer for Cannon Films, which Golan ran with partner Yoram Globus in the '70s and '80s. Cannon was an industry joke but my job, which lasted from '86 to early '88, was sometimes fascinating. I became friendly with Barbet Schroeder as we worked together on the Barfly press kit, and I buddied up with a lot of other cool people, including Tough Guys Don't Dance director-screenwriter Norman Mailer.

I always tell the story of being asked to interview Globus for a corporate profile. During our chat Globus named the biggest selling videos of the '80s, ticking them off title by title, but his dense Israeli accent presented obstacles. One of these films, he said, was "weezudofauhz." I couldn't decipher what he meant when he said it, so after it ended I took my tape recorder downstairs to my office and played the "weezudofauhz" portion for a couple of colleagues. We listened over and over until it finally hit us. Globus was trying to pronounce the title of a 1939 Victor Fleming film that costarred Judy Garland, Bert Lahr, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley and Margaret Hamilton.

My Barfly press-kit duties also allowed for a visit to the modest Long Beach home of Charles Bukowski. The casually-dressed, pot-bellied Bukowski was warm and gracious. Kindly, self-effacing. Chuckling to himself from time to time. And quite sharp. More than once he referred to himself in the third person ("Bukowski has always liked this," etc.) He knew I was in awe of him to some extent and said at one point, having read some of my stuff, "He's influenced by Bukowski." I naturally wanted to drink with the guy, and Bukowski, perceptive fellow that he was, obliged with servings of Coors or Dos Equis. In bottles, as I recall.

Are the low-information types who can't be bothered with absorbing the particular, easy-to-research facts about Obama or McCain the same ones who didn't go to The Insider because they didn't want to see a movie that was about how smoking gives you cancer? That's how Al Pacino explained the apparent lack of interest in this 1999 film during a press conference that I attended.

The fact that corporations and their sociopathic agendas are taking over everything is as dramatically "real" and punchy as the Capone gang taking over Chicago in the 1920s. Michael Mann's movie showed exactly how this malignancy affected CBS News and 60 Minutes back in the mid '90s, and yet millions of good citizens of the USA didn't go because they didn't want to see a smoking-is-bad-for-you movie. Brilliant.

One of the best corporate thrillers ever made and certainly one of the finest films of the '90s, The Insider made only $29 million domestically. This was partly because Disney screwed up on the marketing, granted, but also because the tele-tubbies couldn't be bothered to bone up or read reviews.