Is it the least bit bothersome to anyone (except for the conservatives who read this column) that Adam Sandler is an alleged Rudy Giuliani supporter, and is otherwise regarded as a Bruce Willis-type supporter of right-of-center candidates and causes? I don’t think it’s such a bad thing for a Hollywood guy to be a Giuliani man. It’s a little weird, but far from criminal. I just don’t want to hear anything about Sandler supporting Bush/Cheney/Rove or the Iraqi adventure. (Note: Apologies for misspelling Giuliani’s name — I’ll never get it wrong again.)

“After reading the postings to your blog, I think the folks who have already seen this film are (a) way too young to know anything about the Vietnam War, or (b) utterly insensitive to the film’s racism and reactionary politics. I saw the picture months ago. It’s extremely well-made, but I was also appalled that it glorifies a guy who was on a secret, illegal bombing mission inside Laos when he was shot down. In addition, the movie’s view of the locals is almost unreservedly racist, in that almost everyone is portrayed as sadistic, venal, corrupt…you name it.

“There’s very little acknowledgement that the guards might be acting so brutally because guys like Dieter the pilot (Christain Bale) have been napalming their villages and destroying their crops. About the only time this comes up, in fact, is when Our Boys have to move up their escape plans because the guards, driven desperate by hunger, plan to kill the prisoners and go back to their villages, where they will hopefully find food. But this situation, essentially caused by the American bombing, is only viewed through the lens of the prisoners’ escape attempt.

“Interestingly, the film opens with footage of a bomber napalming Laos from low level, but never really follows up on this. It’s all well and good to make a movie about one man’s will to survive (and Bale is really terrific in the film), but leaving out the context means Herzog’s film is practically an apologia for American war crimes during the Vietnam era.” — hotshot Manhattan entertainment journalist Lewis Beale

Wells to Beale: I’ll forward this to Werner Herzog — maybe he’ll answer you. O rmaybe I’ll just ask him when he shows up to talk about his work between screenings at Santa Monica’s Aero Theatre.

I thought I’d start playing around with running short video clips from time to time. I’m thinking it’ll be especially cool from the Cannes Film Festival and other such destinations. I know MPEG is the easiest loading, most accessible format (I’m buying some video-converting software as we speak), but I’m wondering how difficult it is to view less common video files. I’ve loaded two — an avi file from my Canon PowerShot A540 and a video clip shot by a Treo 700. I’ll be converting to MPEGs, for sure, but can anyone view these inane driving clips with any ease or comfort?

“Question: Can a film symbolically contain all the elements of a vast, complicated and enigmatic tragedy within the microcosmic story of a single individual accidentally caught up in the ghastly mess of — for convenient example — the Iraq war? Short answer: No, not normally.

“Longer answer: A modestly mounted, but curiously poignant little documentary called The Prisoner Or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair, which somehow — quietly, devastatingly — shows and tells you more than you may perhaps want to know about the dehumanization implicit in the mighty, blighted Iraqi adventure.” — from Richard Schickel‘s Time review of Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein‘s documentary, posted 3.23.07.

“It was like watching a killer whale launch itself with barely a splash completely out of the water. Instead of the usual roar of the engines, the airliner seemed to sigh, as if there were no tension in its wings, which support 811,000 pounds during the demonstration flight. Whoa, the whale can fly! And wait a sec, I’m on the whale.” — Time‘s Coco Masters on a recent special promotional flight of the Airbus 380.

TMNT (Warner Bros., 3.23) is surging now with adults, even — 97, 29 and 9, It’s still a $25 to $35 million equation. I don’t know where 300 will fall (in second place?), but The Hills Have Eyes 2 will be right after the turtles among the newbies — 77, 30 and 11. Antoine Fuqua and Mark Wahlberg‘s Shooter will probably come in third — 64, 36, 10. Reign Over Me has been upticking over the last two or three weeks (it’s now at 64, 30 and 8), but it’s only managed a 69% Rotten Tomatoes rating. That said, L.A. Weekly critic Scott Foundas — a good, graceful writer who can be tough, snide and obstinate when so inclined — is eloquent in praise of it.