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 once the Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Pennsylvania tallies come in, which’ll be…what, somewhere between 8 pm and 9 pm Eastern or 5 pm to 6 pm out here?

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 Casino Royale. A guy who has a license to be an heartless killing bastard and get away with it.

This is in response to Matthew Oshinsky‘s 11.3 Daily Beast piece, “Has Bond Lost His Balls?”

“The new Bond is unmistakably a hero of the 21st century, when his baggage sells tickets. Some have compared him with Jason Bourne, the amnesiac contract assassin who made Matt Damon a household name. Like Bond, Bourne kills his way to the truth. But the better parallel is found in the rejuvenated Batman series, which has stripped its central character of his outdated penthouse charm (a la Adam West and Michael Keaton, neither of whom appeared out of uniform without arm candy), and focused morbid attention on his self-esteem.

These are dark and lonely times for our action stars. Much like Bruce Wayne, James Bond is accustomed to having a lot more sex.

“When the first Bond film, Dr. No, was released in 1962, the superagent’s masculinity was measured as much by his domination of women as by pistol skills. Nearly 50 years later, it is measured by the cuts on his face and the scars in his soul. Of course, the character is more difficult to pin down now — thanks to the rejiggering of the series’ chronology, he is at once younger than he was in Dr. No, yet fighting eco-terrorists in 2008. In Quantum of Solace, Bond is still inexperienced, unaware of himself, and about as romantic as a rottweiler. Maybe he just needs time to blossom into the man who seduced the globe in the seamy ’60s.

“Or is this dispassionate killer the one Fleming first envisioned? The author, a notorious womanizer who had served in the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty, once called his creation a ‘highly romanticized version of a true spy.’ But most agree that Fleming based Bond on himself, infusing the character with both the cold ferocity and the magnetism that he did not fully possess.

“Initially, studios rejected the idea of adapting Bond for the screen not on account of his immodest sexuality, not is bloodlust. But the immediate success of Dr. No with male and female viewers alike showed that belly dancers and unsheathed innuendos would be essential elements in any tale of espionage told in the 1960s. After Fleming died in 1964, the cold war thawed, the counterculture evolved, and Bond’s libido became his defining characteristic. But by the 1990s, Brosnan smirked his way into sexual parody and invisible missile-loaded cars received top billing.

“The version of Bond that Hollywood has offered over the span of 22 movies has always been decided by the prevailing desires of the era. This Bond is joining us in an uncertain time — heartbroken, confused, vengeful, and chugging his martinis rather than just sipping them.”

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, behind-the-curve, hanging on to the past.