“Forget Gus Van Sant‘s Paranoid Park, an unfocused, meandering and even dreary look at how a Portland skateboarding teenager (Gabe Nevins) doesn’t deal with his complicity in an impulsive accidental homicide. It’s another atmospheric exotic-youth-culture piece with a minimalist plot, but nowhere near as striking or stylistically distinguished as Van Sant’s Elephant and Last Days.
“I’m calling it his first not-very-good film since Gerry. I’m sorry to say this given the respect I have for Gus, but you can’t hit it out of the park every time.” — written from the Cannes Film Festival on 5.22.07. IFC is opening Paranoid Park on Friday, 3.7.

Let’s hear some affection for poor Gary Gygax, the co-creator of the iconic Dungeons & Dragons — literally the father of modern role-playing gaming — who died today at age 69 from heart troubles.

Dungeons & Dragons was first marketed in ’74. I was never a gamer and didn’t know or care about D & D until Henry Thomas‘s Elliot character mentioned it in E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial. (I was too old and too hormonally-driven to focus my energies on anything that didn’t involve girls, clubbing, playing music, etc.) The game was basically “about players creating magical and heroic characters and guiding them through a series of adventures,” etc.
The interesting thing was the absence of a set game board in this interactive, imaginative adventure, an obit says. All you needed was paper, pen, the dungeon master’s rule book and a set of multi-sided dice. D&D “spawned a booming industry and has inspired a generation of writers, video game designers and filmmakers.”

A Washington Times story by Stephen Dinan reports that “Republicans like Sen. Barack Obama nearly as much as they like Sen. John McCain, according to a new Fox 5/The Washington Times/Rasmussen Reports poll. The survey determined that a quarter of self-identified Republicans rated McCain most likable, but nearly as many — 23 percent — chose Obama as most likable. And among all adults surveyed, Obama was rated likable by more people than Sen. Hillary Clinton and McCain combined, underscoring the Illinois senator’s appeal to voters across the political spectrum.”

The great Leonard Rosenman, a two-time Oscar-winning composer who wrote the truly magnificent score for Elia Kazan‘s East of Eden (’55), has passed on at age 83. Roseman also composed the scores for Nicolas Ray‘s Rebel Without a Cause (also ’55) as well as such Pork Chop Hill, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Fantastic Voyage and A Man Called Horse.

Leonard Rosenman; James Dean in “East of Eden”

Listen to the overture and main-title music from his Eden score. Listen especially to the strange psychological spasm music that happens at the 1:01 mark — certainly not melodic, the strings seems to be lurching and cat-scratching rather than singing. Listen also to the Eden theme at 3:40. It sounds, yes, a little pat and schmaltzy, like something off The Little House on the Prairie. But it gets me every time, in part because I know the film is emotionally fierce and moody and even pulverizing at times.
Rosenman was Oscar-nominated for his original Cross Creek and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home scores in the mid ’80s, but his back-to-back Oscars, won in 1975 and ’76, were for adapting the classical music in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon and the Hal Ashby‘s Bound for Glory.

Obama has won Vermont (except no one has posted numbers or voter profiles) and Matt Drudge is saying that exit polls indicate a deadlock in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island. Really? That would be great except no one believes exit polls. Twelve minutes until the first inklings of Ohio voters will be reported. I need some chill-down herbal tea. 7:30 pm update: MSNBC is saying the Ohio race is too close to call. The Page‘s Mark Halperin says that in Ohio Obama and Clinton “are tighter than the lug nuts on ’55 Ford.”

In Alessandra Stanley‘s just published Vanity Fair piece about women comedian (“Who Says Women Aren’t Funny?), she describes Sarah Silverman thusly: “In her stand-up act and on her Comedy Central show, Silverman is as crude and cruelly insensitive as any male comedian, but with a sexy, coquettish undertone — a Valley Village version of Brenda Patimkin, the Jewish-American Princess in Goodbye, Columbus. In one scene, Sarah calls her sister ‘gay,’ then apologizes to her two gay neighbors. ‘I don’t mean gay like homosexual,’ she says sweetly. ‘I mean gay like retarded.’

Gams, gams, gams — Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, and Tina Fey in an Annie Leibovitz photo posted on the VF website.

I genuinely love Silverman’s stuff, but everything she says and does results in an LQTM — laughing quietly to myself. And I have no problem with LQTM’s. I’ve also laughed at Tina Fey‘s stuff in the same way, and I say that with absolute respect and admiration for her exceptional smarts and wit. I’ve also had this reaction to the jokes of Ellen DeGeneres. So it’s not that women aren’t funny — they certainly are. It’s that some of the very best women comics don’t really make you go “hah-hah-hah!!” They make you go “heh-heh-heh.”
And that’s fine. That’s really not a putdown because I love these guys. I love their sharp-knife sass. I even liked Fey’s recent SNL bit about “bitch is the new black,” despite the pro-Hillary point of it.

The Bullitt car chase on Google maps, the most specific and photo-rich Bullitt location rundown I’ve ever read (including specifics about the car chase), and the YouTube clip that I posted and few weeks ago. (Note: I first saw the link the Google maps thing on Movie City News, which means that David Poland has worldwide territorial rights as far as all things Bullitt are concerned, not just now but from here to eternity.)

I’m so frazzled about what I’m afraid may be dispiriting numbers in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island that I’m having trouble paying attention to movie stuff, much less banging stuff out. Things will start to happen at 7 pm eastern, when Vermont polls close, and then the 7:30 poll closings in Ohio.

Focus Features and Working Title will give a wide release to the Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading on Sept. 12 because of it’s funny (I’ve read the script) and has two big names (George Clooney, Brad Pitt) along with John Malkovich, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton. But how wide? Somewhere between 1500 and 2000 theatres? More? Pamela McClintock‘s Variety story doesn’t mention a Cannes opening, but the IMDB has it down as a Cannes selection (with a date even — 5.14).

Yesterday a Huffington Poststory posted paparazzi bikini shots of Kate Hudson in Miami last weekend, the story being about her possibly being pregnant. So what, right? There was a click-through to other photos, and so I did that and this happened. That’s all.

One of those insufficiently educated over-40 guys, interviewed by Steve Croft two days ago on 60 Minutes. When Croft tells him that Barack Obama-is-a-Muslim rumor isn’t true and asks if he realizes that, the guy kind of half-smiles and more or less holds his ground. Charming. America the beautiful.

“No matter how you cut it, Obama will almost certainly end the primaries with a pledged-delegate lead, courtesy of all those landslides in February,” writes Newsweek‘s Jonathan Alter in a piece that went up this morning.
“Hillary would then have to convince the uncommitted superdelegates to reverse the will of the people. Even coming off a big Hillary winning streak, few if any superdelegates will be inclined to do so. For politicians to upend what the voters have decided might be a tad, well, suicidal.
“For all of those who have been trashing me for saying this thing is over, please feel free to do your own math. Give Hillary 75 percent in Kentucky and Indiana. Give her a blowout in Oregon. You will still have a hard time getting her through the process with a pledged-delegate lead [for Hillary].”
So why is Hillary reportedly determined to stay in the race after tonight? She’s waiting for Something Horrible to happen to Obama. She’s waiting for a Big Stink of some kind to overtake his candidacy that will repel everyone and send them rallying to her side. And you and I know that if there’s any way the Hillary Team can help to make this happen, they will. What an admirable human being she is. What a wonderful way to play the game.