Day: February 6, 2008

Big Eyes, announced last night by Variety‘s Michael Fleming as the forthcoming “directing debut” of renowned screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, will be in fact their second stab at feature directing. Their first was a commercial wipeout called Screwed (’00), which was a pretty good piece on paper (i.e., an inventively plotted and certainly unpredictable script) and didn’t deserve the curses that fell upon it.

I haven’t read Big Eyes, a biopic of famed painter Margaret Keane (to be played by Kate Hudson) “whose distinctive creations featuring big-eyed children became one of art’s first mass-market success stories in the 1950s.” But given the withering contempt for Keane’s paintings in the art world and their general reputation as a mass-market joke (i.e., right next to those black velvet paintings that were so richly lampooned in the original 1979 version of The In-Laws), how can Big Eyes be anything but a portrait of a laughably mediocre artist a la Ed Wood?
Fleming’s story, written without the slightest indication that he’s in on the joke, says that Alexander and Karaszewski’s drama “covers Keane’s personal awakening at the onset of the feminist movement, leading to a lawsuit she filed against her husband, Walter, who claimed credit for her works.”

“Better the devil you know than the diffident debutante you don’t. Better to go with the Clintons, with all their dysfunction and chaos — the same kind that fueled the Republican hate machine — than to risk the chance that Obama would be mauled like a chew toy in the general election. Better to blow off all the inspiration and the young voters, the independents and the Republicans that Obama is attracting than to take a chance on something as ephemeral as hope. Now that‘s Cheney-level paranoia.” — from Maureen Dowd‘s 2.6.08 N.Y. Times column, titled “Darkness and Light.”
Oh, and the latest study-stats piece claiming that McCain’s chances are much better against Clinton than Obama.

According to MSNBC’s “First Read,” Barack Obama won last night’s delegate hunt “by the narrowest of margins, picking up 840 to 849 delegates versus 829-838 for Hillary Clinton.” (Does this tally include New Mexico, which Obama appears to have finally “won” in a squeaker?) Update: The Page‘s Mark Halperin says the current total is 908 for Obama, 884 for Clinton, not including superdelegates.
Obama “also won more states (fourteen to Clinton’s eight), although she won the most populous ones (California and New York),” the First Read summary says. “And Obama’s argument that he might be the most electable Democrat in a general election was bolstered by the fact that he won nine (ten with New Mexico?) red states versus four for Clinton.
“Yet with Clinton’s overall superdelegate lead (259-170, based on the lists they’ve released to us), and when you toss in the 63-48 lead Obama had among pledged delegates going into Super Tuesday, it appears Clinton has about 70 more overall delegates than Obama does (1140-1150 for Clinton versus 1070 to 1080 for Obama). It’s that close, folks…
“Obama’s Opportunity And Challenge: The calendar for the next couple of weeks favors Obama, as we head into February 9 (Louisiana, Nebraska and Washington State); February 10 (Maine); February 12 (DC, Maryland, Virginia); and February 19 (Hawaii and Wisconsin). In fact, in a conference call it held with reporters on Monday,
the Clinton campaign seemed like it was conceding those states when it didn’t mention those states, but said it was looking ahead toward March 4 (Ohio and Texas; don’t forget Rhode Island and Vermont) after Super Tuesday.
“Obama can certainly feel good about last night: He went toe-to-toe with Clinton in a Super Tuesday contest
that once seemed to favor her. And he’s on pace to have a significant financial advantage over Clinton. But as the AP’s Ron Fournier writes, “Obama still has much to prove. The potential for setbacks and mistakes is high.” At some
point, the question will have to be asked: When or how can he put her away? Of course, last night proves that Clinton faces that very same question regarding Obama.”