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 resemble Milk via an elongated nose, which also makes his face look narrower, the actor socks over his characterization of a man he’s made to seem, above all, a really sweet guy, but who crucially possessed the fearlessness and toughness to be a highly successful political motivator, agitator and, ultimately, figurehead of a movement.

“Penn’s Harvey is a man with a ready laugh, alive to the moment, open to life regardless of neuroses and past tragedies, and acutely aware of one’s limited time on Earth. The explosive anger and fury often summoned by Penn in his work is nowhere to be seen, replaced by a geniality that is as welcome as it is unexpected.

“Penn is also an ideal conduit for a characteristic shrewdly underlined in Black’s writing, that being Harvey’s talent for gently but firmly nudging people out of routine or complacent attitudes. Harvey knows how to tweak others with lightly provocative or stimulating comments that break the ice, and Penn lays on just the right amount of casual innuendo to make this crucial personality trait convincing.”

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 it would have been different. Because it would have created its own kind of cool. Because aliens don’t care if their landings look cool. They just want to land safely, and to do that you don’t want to load solely by instruments. You want to be able to see where you’re landing, and for that you need sunlight. Simple.

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 looked like the strongest leader to dig us out.

“What we have learned definitively about him so far — and what may most account for his victory, should he achieve it — is that he had both the brains and the muscle to outsmart, outmaneuver and outlast some of the smartest people in the country, starting with the Clintons. We know that he ran a brilliant campaign that remained sane and kept to its initial plan even when his Republican opponent and his own allies were panicking all around him.

“[And] we know that that plan was based on the premise that Americans actually are sick of the divisive wedge issues that have defined the past couple of decades, of which race is the most divisive of all.” — from Frank Rich’s 11.2 column in the N.Y. Times.

“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 presidential ticket. ‘I just can’t quite bring myself to do it. I hate Sarah Palin. Help me out here.” And this woman is Parker’s friend? Why?

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 about a half-hour late.

Che director Steven Soderbergh, Variety columnist Anne Thompson at Che after-party at Hollywood Social — Sunday, 11.2, 12:40 am.

But after talking with journo pals at the Che after-party, it appears that I’m still in the minority in my passions, save for the opinions of Poland, Kim Voynar and I don’t know how many others. Poland’s Toronto Film Festival review is one of the most mature and perceptive things he’s ever written.

The best line of the night came from CHUD’s Devin Faraci. Part one of Che, or the “upper” half which tells the story of the Cuban revolution of ’57 to early ’59 (and titled The Argentine), is a metaphor for the Obama campaign. (I was thinking this exact thought as I watched it last night.) And the second half about the calamitous Bolivian campaign (and called Guerilla) is a metaphor for McCain-Palin.

A 20something columnist who shall go unnamed faulted Che for not explaining who Guevara is politically and where he’s coming from as a man. That’s partly true — it would help to review the Che Guevara Wikipedia page before going to the film. Is that too much of a homework assignment for the gamer generation? Reading a Wikipedia page for 10 or 15 minutes? Probably.

But what does the above columnist’s opinion say about the education levels out there? You can point to ignorance about anything as a reason why you can’t get into this or that film. Where do you stop with that rationale? If you go into this film as a 100% uneducated overall-wearing No Time for Sergeants yokel, yes, you may not understand from the information in Che who Guevara really is deep down….but who wants to make a movie for yokels? We know the answer to that one, don’t we?

For its bracing aliveness and atmospheric transportation effect alone I have Che locked down in my head as one of the incontestably great films of the century so far, and by any yardstick one of the most profound exercises in atmospheric mood politics of all time. As well as (why stop there?) one of the great unconventional “non-dramatic” mass mind-fucks of all time. Culturally, politically and soulfully, Che is about as far away from the Che Guevara poster-and T-shirt marketing mentality as a Che Guevara film could be. I’m on my knees because of this distinction alone.

“The movie is, in many ways, a more-intimate-than-possible documentary (thus, a fictionalized narrative),” Poland wrote. “Instead of telling us things in dialogue or setting up dramatic moments that makes ideas obvious, Soderbergh & Co let Guevara and The Castros and the rest show themselves in the way people really show themselves — in small, human, real moments.

“They also force the audience to keep its awareness of the future events in check — first, what happened, but the future we all know stares us in the face. This is no revisionist history. There really is no effort to define the politics around these men, but simply to allow them to express what they felt they were doing or what they told others they felt they were doing.

“There is great effort to work, in both films, with the true experience of the men and women fighting the fight. This is one of the real feats of Soderbergh’s work here. Unlike The Hurt Locker, which does a great job of sharply defining the mechanics of the work of bomb defusing teams (which happen to be in Iraq), this detail is about the feel of the human effort, both on the side of the fighters we are watching and the rural people that they are navigating while also fighting national military forces.

“For people looking for a snap-and-slap testament to Che Guevara’s greatness or his hypocrisy or anything definitive, this will never quite work. It just isn’t a straight biopic. It has more in common with Malick’s The Thin Red Line and the second half of Kubick’s Full Metal Jacket than any more traditional war epics There is a bit of Patton, in conceit though not remotely in character, as well.

“Soderbergh and his collaborators have taken the story of Che’ Guevara to define their ideas much the way Robert Bolt did for Lean, though this film creates intimacy like Bolt created epics (though Lean hired actors who brilliantly undercut the stuffiness of Bolt to make most of their films together a perfect balance). Che is Brando to most biopics’ Heston.”

Posted on Slate, drawn by Chuck Asay, Creators Syndicate.

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