I knew 20 minutes or so into last night's Quantum of Solace screening that I'd never see it a second time. (Like I have with The Bourne Ultimatum.) I didn't want to leave -- it certainly holds you and never lets the engine idle -- but I wasn't feeling all that adrenalized. The fierce moves are in place but the high wouldn't kick in. It's the kind of film that keeps you alert and munching your popcorn, but it gives the term "brutal efficiency" a bad name.

Quantum of Solace is Bourne-y, all right. The makers --...Read More

Here's to Mitch Mitchell, 62, the jazzy-styled drummer for the Jimi Hendrix Experience who was found dead yesterday in a Portland, Oregon, hotel room.

By any yardstick he was a truly magnificent mad-man drummer. People always mention his rousing interplay with Hendrix on "Let Me Stand Next To Your Fire" and "Third Stone From The Sun," but the restraint and simplicity he brought to "Red House" has always struck me as somehow more profound. I've always adored the crack-like sound from his snare drum on that track, like the sound of a...Read More

If the world is coming to a spectacular end, you can bet Roland Emmerich, the Irwin Allen of our time, is behind the curtain and working the gears. 2012 will be out next year, five years after The Day After Tomorrow. The intrigue for me is "how much better will the CG be?" Roland deserves credit, at the very least, for cranking out handsome, well-lit disaster films with tight scripts and reasonably professional performances, which is more than Allen ever managed.

The straight-paycheck cast includes John...Read More

I don't mean to sound like a shallow Hollywood guy, but Harrison Ford should consider dying his hair dark gray. Because it's light gray in the new Crossing Over trailer and approaching white, and it just bothers me that Han Solo is looking this long of tooth. He's only 66 and he looks 74. I just want him to look like a semi-credible middle-aged brawny stud, like he did in Firewall. Hold back the tide!

I'm not saying Ford needs to do a Walter Matthau or...Read More

I took this on the corner of Broadway and 49th right after catching a noon showing of Paul Schrader's Adam Resurrected, a kind of Nazis-and-Jews Marat/Sade cinema-of-the-absurd concoction, based on a respected book by Yoram Kaniuk, about a man's gradual recovery from the horrors of World War II.

I needed a moment to collect myself and for some reason locked in on Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow as a way back into my pre-Adam headspace.

Adam Resurrected played at Telluride but doesn't open until late December, so there's plenty of time to get into...Read More

This news is several hours old, but a liberal-wet-dream spoof edition of the New York Times was sold this morning at subway stations all over Manhattan. Maybe I can still snag a copy -- it's only 4:17 pm right now. If anyone has an extra copy I'll meet them somewhere in Manhattan and pay good money.

The guys behind it are The Yes Men, about whom a 2003 doc was made. Here's the press release that went out announcing it.

Dated July 4, 2009, the publication imagines a utopian, Obama-ized reality with...Read More

A portrait of London by a Red Bull-chugging, Guiness-slurping youngish guy who aimed his video camera solely at conventional tourist sites (Picadilly, Regent Street, Soho, the Underground) and felt only the juice, velocity and hoo-hah. A faux Michael Bay sensibility if I ever saw one.

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Off to a noon screening of Adam Resurrected, some filing and walk-around time for three or four hours, and then Quantum of Solace at 7 pm.

"I saw Quantum of Solace last weekend," says Jett in an e-mail this morning from London. "Great action movie. I liked it better than Casino Royale, although the plot wasn't fantastic. I was stirred by seeing a hint of Bond's personal struggle over that girl from Royale. Inner anguish makes Bond more human in this movie. Plus, I saw it with digital projection and great sound, and it kind of leaves you with a wow feeling at the end."

In an 11.12 L.A. Times piece, John Horn speaks with I've Loved You So Long star Kristin Scott Thomas and observes that "if the audience detects that Scott Thomas doesn't fully believe in the character, the whole thing could unravel in a maudlin mess." And KST says, "I was terrified of that. If there was one thing that I am terrified of, it's sentimentality.

"And I really didn't want people to see an actress forgiving a character, saying, 'I am going to show you this person but I am actually really nice.' I wanted it...Read More

Last night The Envelope's Scott Feinberg managed to get on the phone with Australia director Baz Luhrman to discuss various reports about the troubled film, and in particular last Sunday night's report from Australia's Herald Sun that Luhrman -- spoiler-averse, beware! -- has been pressured to go with a "live Hugh" happy ending.

They spoke just before Luhrman boarded a flight from New York (where he and the cast had taken part in an 11.10 Oprah special on the film) back to Sydney, where he's now completing post-production work on the film, which...Read More

I get it. I know why the mostly female audience (literally young or young at heart) is expected to flock big-time to Twilight (Summit, 11.21). It's because they've read Stephenie Meyers' books (or book) and they basically expect the film to be Wuthering Heights with fangs. Fine -- no problem with that.

And I know for sure that the vast majority of this audience doesn't care very much about Meyers' Mormon background. And that fans who are aware of this probably haven't noticed (or cared to notice) what themes or metaphors in the books...Read More

Spoiler-Sensitive Types Beware: Baz Luhrman's Australia, which will have its first screening on or about 11.18, or eight days before it opens, is perceived in some quarters to be a little too broad and big-screen schmaltzy to warrant major interest. (That's strictly a reaction to the trailer, of course.) Well, I have a suggestion for upping the intrigue. But before I mention it, though, the spoiler whiners need to stop reading right now.

Sunday's news from Down Under was that Luhrman "has bowed to studio pressure for a happy ending by letting Hugh Jackman's character...Read More

All right, that's it -- Twilight author Stephenie Meyer gets a permanent cultural demerit for telling Entertainment Weekly that Robert Pattinson's performance in the upcoming movie version is "Oscar-worthy."

Twilight author Stephenie Meyer

Pattinson has a bright future ahead, but only a shameless and unrestrained egotist would call his performance, no matter how affecting or dynamic, a piece of Oscar bait, given that Twilight is generally considered to be gothic-romantic teen-girl trash and is therefore automatically out of consideration. On top of the fact that Summit Entertainment is barely screening Twilight and pissing journalists...Read More

Arizona Daily Star critic Phil Villarreal has reported that Oscar-winning screenwriter Michael Blake (Dances with Wolves) told him earlier today "he'll collaborate again with Kevin Costner on The One, a romantic tragedy based on a screenplay Blake adapted from his short story.

Costner "will play an outcast from a wealthy family who has waited until middle age to meet the right woman," Villarreal writes. (What does "waiting" mean? The guy never dates women? Is he into a Lars and the Real Girl type deal?) His holdout pays off when he meets the woman of his dreams, but the love story...Read More

"You'll be holding your breath for the first 15 minutes of Quantum of Solace -- the action is that gripping," writes critic Marshall Fine. "And you'll be out of breath by the end - the film is that compelling.

"Casino Royale hinted at it, but this new James Bond film is the one that truly announces: Here's the Bond for the 21st century. The Bourne films pointed the way but Quantum of Solace, directed by Marc Forster, will be the template for the adult spy thriller in the new millennium.

"It's got a plot that engages...Read More

Last night Variety's Michael Fleming reported that the Weinstein Co. "has acquired worldwide film rights to the Pulitzer Prize and Tony-winning play August: Osage County and will produce a feature adaptation. TWC co-chairman Harvey Weinstein will join Jean Doumanian and Steve Traxler as producers of the pic, with playwright Tracy Letts doing the adaptation."

Deanna Dunagan (r.) as Violet Weston, the family matriarch; Amy Morton (l.) as her daughter, and Rondi Reed (center) as Violet's sister.

Except seven and a half months ago I wrote that "producer Jean Doumanian is partnering with the Weinstein Co....Read More

I missed this yesterday. Every latent homophobe out there (and particularly the African Americans and Hispanics who voted for Barack Obama and California's Prop Hate) needs to listen and reflect. Just a couple of minutes. Won't mess your day in the slightest.

Yesterday Big Bloggy Picture's Patrick Goldstein posted a discussion with Sony chairman Amy Pascal about "new rules" that sometimes come to mind when a particular type of movie has just tanked. Death of Soul Men = no more movies about soul singers. Death of The Invasion = WB chief Jeff Robinov reportedly telling producers that WB is "no longer doing movies with women in the lead," etc. How phobic is Pascal along these lines?

"I did say [that] I hate movies that begin with a bet," Pascal replies. "It's a bad idea, because it usually...Read More

"A potentially exceptional story is told in a flatly unexceptional manner in Defiance," says Variety's Todd McCarthy in an 11.10 review. "True-life yarn of a band of Jewish brothers who led a small but resilient resistance movement against the Nazis in Belorussia during World War II seems like such a natural for the bigscreen that it's surprising it's never cropped up before.

"But Edward Zwick's version of the grim but inspirational events becomes more conventional as it goes, topped by a climax straight out of countless war pics and Westerns.

"Through roughly the first...Read More

I'm getting a funny aroma from this second-hand, loose-talk, Playlist-posted review of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which came from a conversation between Playlist editor Rodrigo Perez and a friend who'd just come from a screening. The gist is that "while the guy didn't think it was terrible, [he] did say the film wasn't the tearjerker we all heard it was supposed to be and was much more of an 'emotional dud.'"

That aside, the friend said that David Fincher's film has "the kind of tepidness that the Academy loves."

The reason I'm skeptical is because of a line...Read More

Every well-made film that connects always does two things. It tells a compelling story and delivers a basic this-is-how-life-is theme that any moviegoer over the age of 10 can make sense of and recognize as truthful. I'm saying this because as much as I liked Ron Howard 's Frost/Nixon after seeing it a couple of weeks ago, I couldn't quite put my finger on the theme until now. This was due to laziness or a form of temporary blockage on my part. Because it's as obvious as the ski-nose on Richard Nixon's face.

Peter Morgan's screenplay, based on his stage play, is...Read More

"There's never a doubt that the losers-at-love of British writer-director Joel Hopkins' Last Chance Harvey are on intersecting arcs, that they'll meet cute and stroll off into a sooty London sunset. But stars Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson (reunited after 2006's Stranger Than Fiction) are so disarmingly charming that even the most treacly moments work an emotional magic.

"Auds may skew a bit older for the Overture Films release, but the hardest cases will be moved and tell their friends. Some couples just look good together. Thompson and Hoffman look like an exclamation point walking a...Read More

In the beginning of his New York article called "Obamaism," Kurt Andersen writes that "for those of us born since World War II, never in our adult lifetimes has any single event made us prouder of our country -- and for those of us who live in this city, never have we felt more completely in sync with it.

"We're all Dorothy, stunned at having just stepped out -- tripped out, one might even say -- from a half-wrecked black-and-white reality into a strange and glorious new Technicolor world.

"Up till now, our country's big, official civil-rights milestones had consisted of...Read More

The first half of Steven Soderbergh's Che -- formerly known as The Argentine -- will be released by IFC theatrically on New Year's Day, 1.1.09, and the second half -- once known as Guerilla -- will open on 2.20.09, according to a press release. The full boat four-hour-plus version will open in Manhattan and Los Angeles on 12.12 for one week. Or so I recall reading. There's no official website that I can find.

In a just-released USA Today/Gallup poll based on data accumulated last weekend, President-elect Barack Obama now enjoys a post-Election Day rating of 68% favorable, and President Bush has a 68% unfavorable -- which is actually a slight improvement from just before Election Day, when 70% said they disapproved of the job he's doing.

I'm three or four hours late on this one, but I found it charmingly human that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said "fuck you" this morning during a discussion about the manner and personality of Obama vs. McCain campaigns. (New York's "Daily Intel" says he was "referencing a story guest Jay Carney had recently told him off the air.") Minor blurt, no big deal, should have said "eff you," forget it. The best part of the clip comes when co-host Mika Brzezinski says, "Uhm, honey?"

In Pixar's Up (Disney, 5.29.09), a grumpy old guy (voiced by Ed Asner) leaves home and visits the far-away jungle (the Amazon, I'm guessing -- Africa is too scary and political) by tying several hundred balloons to his house and floating off into the wild blue yonder. Her accidentally takes a lovable obese kid (a relation of one of the WALL*E teletubbies) along for the ride. Christopher Plumber will also voice a role. The HD stereo version of the teaser went up on 11.8.

Up is being...

So what's with Us magazine critic Thelma Adams not choosing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as a likely Best Picture contender in Tom O'Neil's latest Gold Derby/Envelope survey? Film critics in Afghanistan know that Button is at least one of the likely five. You could deduce that Adams didn't spitball it because she hasn't seen it -- fine. But she's got Revolutionary Road in there as her #5 pick and nobody's seen that one, to the best of my knowledge. Help me out here.

Here's a nicely-written N.Y. Times profile of fivethirtyeight.com's Nate Silver, posted yesterday and written by Stephanie Clifford. Silver's largely accurate poll readings and projections, which began last March with the launch of his site, gave me Obama comfort all through the campaign.

The great Miriam Makeba, 76, collapsed and died of a heart attack last night -- technically early this morning -- during an on-stage performance near the southern Italian city of Naples. She collapsed "after singing one of her most famous hits Pata Pata," her family said in a statement.

When the moment comes I want to be at work also. I want them to find me slumped over my computer. That or collapsed on some busy sidewalk in New York, Paris, London, Prague or Marrakech. Or...

I went to YouTube this morning and saw a "500 Internal Server Error" message with the following information: "Sorry, something went wrong. A team of highly trained monkeys has been dispatched to deal with this situation. Please report this incident to customer service." Something tells me that clicking on the customer service link will expose me to a virus.

"Why did I like Che so much? Because it seemed to me that Steven Soderbergh and his crew had somehow jumped into a time machine and emerged to plunk their cameras down and capture the life of Ernesto Guevera on film for this generation. Benicio Del Toro, in a performance of enormous beauty and restraint, slips under the skin of the character and simply inhabits him for four-and-a-half hours. No grandstanding, no huge emotional scenes -- he simply is." -- In Contention's John Foote in an 11.9 posting.

"It is a performance done largely with the...Read More

Three Stories About Joan, which was to have been the directing debut of Bruce Willis, has recently experienced big financial woes, I'm told. A recent confrontation between Willis, who's also one of the film's producers, and producers Mark Damon and Moshe Diamant led to Willis walking off the film, according to a source in New Orleans who heard rumblings about the Shreveport-based production a week ago.

Bruce Willis

Willis could always come back and finish the job, of course. This could be just an interlude.

The film is reportedly a $20 million psychological thriller about...Read More

Spoiler Whiners Beware: An 11.10 Herald Sun article is reporting that with a little more than two weeks before the big opening, Australia director Baz Luhrman -- get ready, here it comes -- "has bowed to studio pressure for a happy ending" by letting Hugh Jackman's character live instead of die.

"Luhrman's initial cut, which ran for more than three hours, ended with Jackman's character, The Drover, dying in the final scenes," the unbylined story reads.

"After disastrous reviews from test screenings, 20th Century Fox executives decided [that] the film's final moments should be...Read More

I'm also looking forward to seeing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Revolutionary Road, but this 11.7 video conversation between Entertainment Weekly's Dave Karger and Missy Schwartz about how they might fare in the Oscar race, and especially Schwartz's comments about same, gave me some pause. The words that came to mind were "yuck," "unctuous," "toadyish" and "overly invested."

What is it with Schwartz's giddy delight in the likelihood of a huge Oscar telecast audience if Brangelina shows up as dual nominees? "If [Benjamin Button] meets everybody's expectations and Brad gets a nomination," she says, "that'll be a huge ratings...Read More

What exactly is the vampire metaphor, and why are vampire movies and TV shows so popular with under-25s (younger women in particular), gays, Anne Rice and people of that general ilk? Why hasn't anyone tried to explain it in 250 words or less? I can't find an explanation that I really like.

The rote explanation is that vampires can only find fulfillment after dark, so people who love vampire movies are a bit like that also. They see themselves as nocturnal adventurers -- their spirits set free by the special aura of the night. For them daytime endeavor represents a kind of...Read More

Variety's Anne Thompson and many other women out there are into the romantic whatchamacallit vampire metaphor and are totally hot for Catherine Hardwicke's Twilight (Summit, 11.21). Here's a Thompson handheld-video interview with hottie Twilight star Robert Pattinson.

It would be nice to actually see Twilight, of course, so the rest of us (i.e., the guys) can get on the train. It opens 12 days from now and I haven't, like, received an invitation to any press screenings yet. Why is that, do you think? I'm just asking. I wanna...

"More than 35 years after it was released, I don't think there's any movie that captures the chaos and intensity of a political campaign quite as well as Michael Ritchie's The Candidate." -- N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott in a recent (and apparently undated) video essay.

I'm not so sure this was such a good thing. For me there's only one John Hughes movie of any lasting resonance -- Planes, Trains and Automobiles. I'm sure that people who went to high school in the '80s feel differently. Hughes is one reason I hate the '80s. I hate the hairstyles that everyone (especially young actors) wore in Hughes' films. I hated the shoulder pads in early to mid '80s sports jackets that were sometimes worn in Hughes comedies. I could go on and on.

I was trying to console a friend the other day who'd just lost his job. Everybody gets laid off or fired, I told him. Happens to the best of us. To put him in a slightly better mood I told him a story about getting canned by a chain-link fence company in Fairfield, Connecticut, that I worked for in my early 20s. It's a good story because I wasn't just "fired" but angrily jettisoned due to an error of classic proportions. A lulu.

I worked with two other guys for the company. Every day we loaded big...Read More

Cherry Jones' opinion of Meryl Streep's performance in Doubt differs from that of Variety's Todd McCarthy, which was a fairly sharp diss. A Tony Award winner for playing the same role on the Broadway stage, Jones recently told The Envelope's Tom O'Neil she "was impressed by how Streep underplayed the nun's villainy, giving the character more emotional vulnerability.

"To illustrate the difference in their two performances, Jones cited a scene in which Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) fiercely confronts the nun who accuses him of molesting a school boy. Glowering at her, he asks, 'Have you ever sinned?'

"'On stage, I...Read More

Daily Beast editor Tina Brown asked last Wednesday morning if "we can please not risk any more catastrophes by letting [the Bush] administration stick around? Just scrap the transition and let President Obama clean house right away like the Brits do at Number 10 Downing Street?" A few hours later David Letterman said the exact same thing in his monologue: "I think I speak for most Americans [in saying]...does anybody mind if he starts a little early? Would that be a problem?"

Instead of referencing Nancy Reagan, Barack Obama should have said he "didn't want to get into a Mary Todd Lincoln thing about doing any seances." President Lincoln's wife may have held "as many as eight seances" in the White House. Nancy Reagan's thing was astrology, not seances.

Presumably this morning's news about Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah receiving the most nominations for the 21st European Film Awards (along with Paolo Sorrentino's Il Divo) will boost its standing with the Academy's foreign language committee.

Unless the fuddy-duds line up against it. Yesterday Pete Hammond wrote that Gomorrah "is getting predictions that it will be one of the final five, despite mixed response from some who frowned on its generous amount of violence."

But Gomorrah's violence is par for any crime film. The biggest standout factor in this portrait of the crime world of the Camorra, the Italian mafia, is a...Read More

HE reader/photoshopper Brad Jones yesterday re-did his Stooges dream cast pic (posted yesterday morning) to include Benicio del Toro.

The orders were so hot and heavy for the 11.5 N.Y.Times Obama issue that the online order page shut down yesterday due to overload. But it's working this morning.

In his latest "Notes on a Season" column, The Envelope's Pete Hammond claims that "at this point the Best Picture frontrunners among members I have talked to are Wall-E , The Dark Knight and Changeling, in that order."

Changeling? Nobody on my wavelength has considered, much less flirted with, this notion. I guess Hammond's party-chat friends haven't been told that Clint Eastwood's '08 Oscar shot is Gran Torino or nothing. Forget Changeling.

"They haven't seen much else," says Hammond -- what, no Milk screenings? -- but Slumdog Millionaire "is slowly starting to be mentioned as well."

Hammond acknowledges that "unanimous [forecast]...Read More

The gist of Patrick Goldstein's 11.6 Big Picture blog posting is that two journalists on the Hollywood beat -- Entertainment Weekly's Dave Karger and Variety's Anne Thompson -- are part of "a gang of daffy, clown-suit-clad Oscar bloggers making endlessly moronic Best Picture predictions."

The Envelope's Tom O'Neil took offense at this, doubled-down on the anger and posted an argumentative response. He mainly said that when you boil it all down Goldstein is (a) simply resentful of Oscar bloggers for encroaching on his turf, and that (b) he's made as many moronic or inaccurate predictions as anyone else so whaddaya...Read More

Something snapped the other day when I happened to watch that Changeling trailer on the tube for what felt like the 26th or 27th time. To my surprise, I laughed. I've heard Angelina Jolie tearfully wail "I want my son back!" so often that the film's generally affecting emotional poignancy has been made to seem garish and even tacky. Which Clint Eastwood is constitutionally incapable of being. That ad has blanketed everything.

I guess I've been so in love with Crowe-as-Moe that I didn't "hear" the reports about Benicio del Toro having the inside track to play the role in the Farrelly brothers film. (I heard them physiologically but psychologically I flinched.) In any case, maybe Nashville-residing HE reader Brad Jones, who's sent along an improved Photoshop image of the New Stooges, would consider doing a new one with Moe del Toro.

"I love the inspired casting choices you have mentioned for the new Stooges movie," Jones wrote, "but yesteday's photoshop image was for shit (as...Read More

A week or two ago James Lillis created this image for a t-shirt that's being sold for $25.94, blah blah. He created this sometime in late October? Why didn't he wait until next April? I'd be all over this if I was a Warner Bros. vp running Heath Ledger's Best Supporting Actor campaign.

I got into a disagreement with a fellow columnist after last week's screening of John Patrick Shanley's Doubt. He didn't have a problem with the acting or the writing or the general thrust of it, even, but he felt it "wasn't visual enough." I gathered that he wanted to see Doubt meets Children of Men. Something swoopier, fiercer, crazier...whatever.

The irony for me is that the visual delivery in this film (and I don't just mean the beautifully muted fall-winter colors in Roger Deakins' cinematography) is just right. Shanley's direction serves the holy grail of the text...Read More

That too-long-in-the-works Barack Obama documentary from directors Amy Rice and Alicia Sams -- the doc that began shooting in '06 and may not be finished until sometime next fall (or so I read earlier this year) -- will air on HBO, according to an exclusive report by Indiewire's Eugene Hernandez.

This thing should be out in the world concurrent with or just after Obama's inauguration. By next fall all kinds of headaches, heartaches and downturns will have kicked in and the vibe won't be the same. The world demands a fast turnaround these days. It's being edited by Sam Pollard ....Read More

"I was born in 1941. That was the year they bombed Pearl Harbor. I've been living in darkness ever since. It looks like things are going to change now." -- Bob Dylan speaking during an election night concert at Minnesota's Northrop Auditorium. All fine and good, but what happened to "don't follow leaders, watch parking meters"?

Identify, please. It's a tracking shot pre-credit thing. Too easy.

Agreeing with my (two or three years old) suggestion that Russell Crowe should do whatever it takes schedule- and commitment-wise to land the role of Moe in the Farelly Brothers' Three Stooges flick, Hunter Lurie has come up with two inspired additions -- Philip Seymour Hoffman as Curly and Robert Downey, Jr. as Larry. Please make this happen, God. Think about it. Perfect.

Lurie allows that "maybe Crowe is a funny guy" given that "hitting the hotel clerk in the face with a phone is a borderline-Stooges stunt on its own. No maybe about it,...Read More

Yesterday morning Indiewire's Eugene Hernandez tried to find a copy of the 11.5 New York Times trumpeting Barack Obama's win. "Unable to find one anywhere, I ultimately ended up at the Times building where many people had the same goal," he writes. "I spoke with a few of the folks waiting on line and cut this together very quickly. Newspapers may be facing increasingly tough times, but on a day like yesterday, many of us still look to the printed page."

If I weren't sitting on a hard airlines terminal floor I might write my own riff about the passing of the revolting and homophobic Proposition 8. But it's very difficult to be focused and productive in such a physically uncomfortable position. (Plus I'm too angry at Continental Airlines to think straight anyway.)

So let's just say I'm also wondering, as Kris Tapley did earlier today, if an earlier release of Milk -- which deals in part with the campaign against the homophobic Briggs Amendment (i.e., Prop 6) in '78 -- might have somehow raised consciousness and perhaps helped defeat Prop 8....Read More

Continental Airlines did its casual best to put me there. I helped out some, I'll admit, but it was mainly their doing. That's how I see it, at least. It's always "their" fault, right? The long and the short is that I'm sitting cross-legged on the floor at LAX, my initial flight long gone. Don't ask, the milk is spilt, the day is shot. But you have to roll with this stuff.

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough exhibited shock and remorse a few minutes ago upon learning from The Page's Mark Halperin that Barack Obama's chief of staff will (according to the D.C. rumble) be Rahm Emanuel. "He is a partisan," said Joe. "He's Ari Gold's brother. Rahm Emanuel? Wow. Wow!"

I'm off to LAX and New York. I won't be posting again until sometime this evening. Okay, maybe something from the lounge. I'm easy either way. Great day, great mood, all is well.

Spike Lee joked a little bit this morning on MSNBC about Jesse Jackson's tearful moment last night. It was a bit ironic, I thought, given Jackson's "I wanna cut his nuts off" remark about Obama, which he was overheard saying last July. Nonetheless, Jackson's heart had a lot of company last night. We were all feeling it, all one.

There's an indication, at the very least, in a story posted last night from MSNBC "health writer" Melissa Dahl that the "Generation of Shame" was redeemed yesterday by voting in proportionately significant levels. I think I owe the under-25s an acknowledgment of this, given my suspicious attitudes about their commitments levels. They're no longer the bad guys in my book. To go by Dahl's piece, I mean. She's saying they didn't cop out, stood up, did right.

Dahl says they "voted Tuesday in higher numbers than in the last presidential election -- and they voted more Democratic. Youth turnout appears...Read More

"The effect that this election has had on me and on so many people is extraordinary," Dustin Hoffman said late yesterday morning in his office. "[And] you naturally analyze why everyone feels this strongly." It's payback and redress for the malignancies of the Bush poisonings, of course, but, as Hoffman said, "There are so many layers, that this day in America, after eight years -- we've paid our dues for today."

This quote is from a Politico story by Jeffrey Ressner that went up last night, which is fine in itself, but I wanted to...Read More

I can't say this with any more urgency. Somehow, some way, Peter and Bobby Farrelly have to get Russell Crowe to play Moe Howard in their Three Stooges movie, now that it's finally been greenlit by MGM. Crowe is one of the funniest big-name guys out there. He knows what insanity is. He embraces it. I mean that as a compliment.

The Farrellys "will polish the script they wrote with Michael Cerrone and will direct the picture," Variety's Michael Fleming wrote earlier today. The un-shot pic will open on 11.20.09.

The Root's Christopher Beam and Chris Wilson have posted a list of five things that white people don't want to do in the wake of Barack Obama's victory:

1. Don't personally congratulate all your black friends. Black people are not a sports team, and Obama did not win the Super Bowl.

2. Don't declare that you "never thought you'd see the day." You never thought you'd see the day?

3. Don't start crossing the street in order to walk next to a black person. President Obama is glad you support racial reconciliation, but he takes a hard line against jaywalking.

4. Don't...Read More

McCain's concession speech was, I have to say it, moving. He was classy. He was choking up a bit. "The failure is not yours," he said to the faithful, "but mine." The right-wing crowd booed, of course, when he said that Obama had triumphed because they're crude, low-life brownshirts. But McCain said "please" and -- you have to give him this much -- conceded with dignity. His eyes were moist. His voice cracked just a bit. I slightly felt for him.

MSNBC has just called the election for Barack Obama. Daily Kos is reporting that reporters have been "called out to the lawn" in anticipation of John McCain's concession. Right after the West Coast tallies are announced, I presume. The rancid has lost. The stupefying Palin ugliness has been put in its place. As Keith Olbermann just put it, this is a "Man on the Moon" moment straight out of 1969. There is a God. I'm getting all choked up.

"Even if your candidate didn't win tonight, you have reason to celebrate," Arianna Huffington wrote a little while ago. "We all do. Barack Obama's impressive victory says a lot about America. Because tonight voters decided that they didn't want to look back. They wanted to step into the future. The history of America is studded with great breakthroughs followed by decades of consolidation and occasional regression. Tonight's victory proclaims the end of the dark years of the Bush regression. It's time for another American breakthrough."

Whatever happened to the Bradley Effect? Has anyone seen it? Is it down at the liquor store picking up a couple of cases of Carta Blanca? Is it outside having a smoke?

MSNBC, CBS and Fox just gave Ohio to Barack Obama, and that, when you add in the Obama-leaning Florida and Pennsylvania already in the BHO column, is the whole magilla. Obama has this in the bag. New Mexico just went for Obama also. Forget it -- McCain is done. Barack now has 200 electoral votes vs. 85 for McCain. I want McCain on that stage within two hours, no less, with a concession speech. I want his tail between his legs. Lie down, bitch!

What's up with L.A. Times guy Patrick Day and World Entertainment News Network's Kevin Lewin in Tom O'Neil's latest Gold Derby Oscar prediction chart? Seriously -- what's up with their waving off Kristin Scott Thomas's Best Actress chances? Neither are putting her in their favored five list? We need to mob up on these two, take 'em outside and slap 'em around.

Zack and Miri makers Kevin Smith and Seth Rogen riffing on a MySpace video about the "fat guys don't get hot girls in real life" concept -- a rebuttal of sorts to my views along these lines. They don't mention HE by name, but I'm pretty sure they're talking about my reviews of Knocked Up and Zack and Miri. "Who writes that?" Rogen indignantly asks. "Skinny guys who can't get laid...that's who."

It is standard Hollywood policy to elbow big-name male actors into secondary character roles once they hit their late 50s. And so Dustin Hoffman, one of the all-time acting legends whose leading-man career went great guns from the late '60s to the early '90s, has been playing colorful oddballs over the last decade or so. The last time he had a lead role with a seriously dimensional beating heart was (am I wrong?) in Stephen Frears' Hero ('92).

But now he's gotten hold of a solid lead role -- a kind of soulful sad sack --...Read More

"Tim Robbins tried voting at his NYC polling place earlier today," TMZ reported about an hour ago. "There was some kind of ruckus and the cops were called. Apparently Robbins has been voting at that polling place for more than a decade, but today his name wasn't on the register.

"They told Robbins he had to fill out a provisional ballot but he didn't want to do it. An argument erupted between Robbins and the poll worker. Robbins allegedly got loud and the poll worker said he was calling the cops. Robbins accused the poll worker of trying to intimidate him...Read More

I arrived at the West Knoll voting location in West Hollywood at 7:02 am; I was out of there at 7:40 am. This guy kept coming out and saying "Orange table? Any orange tables?" I don't know what orange meant but I was a green table guy. A nice vibe and thank fortune it didn't take two or three or more hours.

This guy, this Doubt fan, keeps writing me about the film, acknowledging that I'm still under embargo but wanting to know if I think it's a Best Picture contender plus an "actor's movie," or just the latter. It's certainly an actor's movie, I said, and arguably...make that certainly a Best Picture contender in that it serves a brilliant play with bracing clarity and authority, and when you throw in Roger Deakins' exquisite cinematography it's a fairly impressive thing. A class act in every respect.

The guy's latest inquiry is whether or not the ambiguity and suspense of the story (i.e., did he or...Read More

Yesterday Daily Beast blogger/columnist Jessi Klein wrote a valentine to MSNBC's David Gregory, whom I've written about myself.

I've never posted the trailer for Last Chance Harvey (Overture, 12.26), which went up a little more than a week ago. I'm speaking with a certain participant tomorrow so it seemed like the right time.

The trailer for F. Javier Gutierrez's Before The Fall, which I missed (naturally, typically) last Sunday at the AFI Fest, but which will have another showing Wednesday, 11.6 at 7 pm at the Mann Chinese. It's said to be an artier, smarter, scarier Deep Impact -- a film about a killer meteor about to hit earth and what everyone decides to do in the three days left before the Big Moment. It's also known as 3 Dias.

"American Tune" courtesy of the people behind progressivefuture.org and Paul Simon.

The Hollywood Reporter's Paul J. Gough wrote last night that "the networks aren't going to hold back calling the election for Barack Obama or John McCain if either gathers the magic number of 270 electoral votes."

It's therefore "possible, if not altogether likely, that the presidential election could be called before polls close in the west," he writes. The networks are all claiming "they won't make any predictions before their time. But executives say it would be foolish for them to sit on a projection if they're sure, and it wouldn't be fair to viewers.

The election will basically be over...Read More

I'm no one to talk with today's Joaquin Pheonix-Brian Dennehy comparison, but this Vanity Fair cover argues that there may be such a thing as too rich and too thin. Kate Winslet had her own thing and Angelina Jolie had hers. Now, here, they're nearly the same. I had to look twice at this photo before realizing it's Kate "weighs-a-lot" (i.e., her alleged Jim Cameron nickname during the shooting of Titanic).

My favorite James Bond moment of all time was about cold-blooded murder. It happened in Dr. No when Sean Connery looked at Anthony Dawson's Professor Dent, told him that the weapon he's just tried to dispatch Connery with "is a Smith and Wesson, and you've had your six." And then thunk! And then once more for good measure, in Dawson's back....thunk! Cold as ice, and rather enjoying it.

This is the 007 I've wanted to hang with with ever since, but who's never once re-appeared. Not really. Except, I suppose, mildly speaking, in the finale of...Read More

The Courage Campaign has put together a list of recommendations on the various Callifornia ballot initiatives (or state measures) that everyone will be voting upon tomorrow. No to Prop. 8!

I'm a serious white guy. English and German heritage. I grew up in white-bread towns (Westfield, NJ and Wilton, CT) and began life with white-bread tastes, attitudes and core beliefs. And yet now, looking at all those defensive-looking white people cheering on John McCain at his rallies, I feel pity and alienation. I shake my head and ask myself, "Who are these jerks?" To be an over-40 white middle-classer these days is, by the standard of the political polls I've been reading, to be a little bit sad and scared. Half of them, I mean, or a bit more than half. Culturally reactionary,...Read More

To go by this just-released trailer, The Reader, it would seem, is a reasonably strong acting-honors thing for Kate Winslet because she plays someone who sharply defines herself in terms of emotional need (i.e., an affair with a younger guy) and by being a good Nazi guard. Whereas in Revolutionary Road she's playing a '50s surburban wife beset by Cheeverish ennui and struggling with despair. It's the difference between declaration and guilt vs. aspiration and lament.

I've been thinking off and on about Joaquin Phoenix's annnounced retirement from acting, the news of which broke three or so days ago. I don't care what he says -- this is a Frank Sinatra/Daniel Day Lewis retirement. Two to three years and then back in it. But when he returns, "Joaq" might want to be a few pounds thinner. He's been looking a little chunky lately. A little bit of a Brian Dennehy thing going on.

I think his decision is mainly a reaction to his having acted in three critical and commercial duds in a...Read More

Variety's Todd McCarthy is calling Gus Van Sant's Milk "a fluent return to the relative mainstream" and "an adroitly and tenderly observed account of the life of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man voted into significant U.S. public office. Smartly handled study of the San Francisco politician's powerful effect on individuals and society accurately catches a moment in American political life three decades ago, but is most notable for the surprising and entirely winning performance by Sean Penn in the leading role.

"Made to more closely...Read More

The trailer indicates that Keanu Reeves' alien space ship lands at night in The Day The Earth Stood Still (20th Century Fox, 12.12). That's because night landings look cooler than day landings with those standard bullshit intense lights piercing through all the fog and smoke. But aren't we getting sick of alien night landings (E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Invaders From Mars)?

I would have preferred one in broad daylight under blue skies, like the one from Klaatu in the original 1951 version. Because...Read More

It's probably a good idea to get out the wooden paddles, cricket bats and cat 'o' nine tails in case the Generation of Shame lives up to its reputation and doesn't turn out in record numbers -- i.e., votes at roughly the same levels they did in '04. I've read two early-vote estimates that the under-25s have been turning out in much lower numbers than expected. So get ready. I'm hoping for the best like everyone else, but if these guys slack off the wrath of Daniel Plainview will have nothing on me.

I wince slightly every time I hear NPR reporter-commentator Michele Norris say her first name. She pronounces it MEE-shell, Paul McCartney-style. The correct way to say it is Meesh-ell with that French tongue-rolling sound on the second syllable. You can even say Mish-shell. If you're going to go with the "mee" you need to tone it down and again, with the accent on the second syllable.

"Obama doesn't transcend race. He isn't post-race. He is the latest chapter in the ever-unfurling American racial saga. It is an astonishing chapter. For most Americans, it seems as if Obama first came to dinner only yesterday. Should he win the White House on Tuesday, many will cheer and more than a few will cry as history moves inexorably forward.

"But we are a people as practical as we are dreamy. We'll soon remember that the country is in a deep ditch, and that we turned to the black guy not only because we hoped he would lift us up but because he...Read More

"What are these zombies of the voting booth" -- i.e., the still-undecideds -- "really waiting for?," Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker wrote on Friday. "Something they won't find: the perfect choice. It doesn't exist. The clear path is dappled with doubt. The telling clue is buried in the hearts of Col. Mustard, who worries about Iraq and taxes under Obama, and Miss Scarlet, who can't get past McCain's age and the winking wonderwoman of Wasilla.

"A friend's late-night call cast light on the undecided's milieu. She was filling out her ballot at home and had made every choice but one. The...Read More

An Australia trailer added on 10.31 -- two days ago!

I watched Che again last night and received the same fortifications, which made me feel wonderful. But the spiritual seep-through factor, truth be told, felt about the same as what I got from my second viewing in Toronto. So it's a two-timer more than a threebie. Nothing wrong with that. It's an incredible thing to sit through and let into your head and heart. I love this line of David Poland's -- "Che is Brando to most biopics' Heston."

Che star Benicio del Toro prior to last night's 6 pm showing of Che, which actually started...

This really happened, it seems. Two comedians from CKOI in Montreal. It's Palin's voice, clearly. "I just love killing those animals...it's so fun!" I think this speaks to her ability to read and judge and suss things out. Hilarious. Classic. It's not fake.

Australia director Baz Luhrmann has described the frenetic last-minute editing process of his film to The Australian's Christine Jackman thusly: "We always thought it was extremely precarious. We're going to give it our all and at the moment 11.26 is an absolutely real date. But I would not be truthful if I didn't say it's a little like landing a jumbo jet on an aircraft carrier in a storm."

Jackman likens Luhrmann's situation to "living in a mental asylum, and the clock is ticking.

"Across the globe in another time zone, studio executives are chewing their...Read More

"In three days we'll choose a new steward for the presidency and begin a new chapter in our history. It's the biggest decision that we make together as Americans. A lot turns on the outcome. I believe the right leader for this moment in history is Senator John McCain." -- Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking this morning.

Steven Soderbergh's Che shows tonight at the AFI Fest inside the big Chinese theatre, and I will be in attendance. This will be my third time and the honest-to-God truth is that I can't wait to slip into it again. For me the Che experience is not unlike how Tom Wolfe once described the experience of settling into the Sunday New York Times -- "that great public bath, that vat, that spa, that regional physiotherapy tank, that White Sulphur Springs, that Marienbad, that Ganges, that River Jordan for a million souls."

Che, in other...Read More

I had a conversation on Skype a while ago with Jett, who's attending Syracuse University's London annex until early December. I asked if he was thinking of going to Quantum of Solace this weekend. "Yeah, I might go...maybe," he said. The average British moviegoer has a different attitude. Quantum of Solace earned $8 million yesterday on its opening day of business, making it the biggest Friday opener of all time in the U.K. Variety's Archie Thomas reports that the "previous Friday best was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with $6.5 million ."

Fantasy Moguls' Steve Mason is reporting that while High School Musical 3 should win the weekend, it "may" be down a mind-blowing 77% from last weekend for a Sunday-night finish of $9.5 million. Well-liked movie! Great word-of-mouth! Saw V is expected to finish second with $9.1 million, followed by Clint Eastwood's Changeling with $9 million. Kevin Smith's Zack & Miri Make a Porno is "a disaster," says Mason, with just $2.3 million Friday and a likely $6.9 million and a fourth-place finish by Sunday night. I'm sorry about this. Zack and Miri is Smith's best film in a long while. It deserved...Read More