Last night I finally sat down with Jennifer Seibel Newsom‘s Miss Representation, a 90-minute doc about the the cultural suppression of women of all ages by way of sexual pigeonholing, leering and lip-smacking. It’s an old feminist lament, but it does seem that the media has been eyeballing women in a somewhat more intensive sexual manner over the last 10 or 15 years than before. And that this “conditioning” has created an unhealthy psychology among millions of younger women, persuaded as they’ve been to shape their images, goals and personalities to suit this Maxim-ized ideal.

I’ll admit that I watched because Inside Job co-dp Svetlana Cvetko , a friend, was the doc’s principal dp. But it’s a handsome, well-edited, highly intelligent presentation all the same. And there’s no disputing most of the observations, views and personal stories it contains. It’s a fundamentally fair and honest look at an unfortunate situation.

I have three quibbles.

One, early on Newsom (wife of San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom) mentions that she’s felt somewhat guilty since childhood over the death of her older sister, but she provides no particulars. Go full disclosure if you’re going to bring something like this up, or don’t bring it up at all.

Two, a casual observer might get the idea that Miss Representation is pushing a view that trying to appear attractive to the opposite sex is somehow diminishing or self-destructive. It’s actually saying that this process has become excessive and neurotic in recent years, and that many younger women are the worse for it. It could do with a bit more exactitude.

And three, it was a huge mistake for Newsom to focus on Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin in this context. The doc implies that some media commentators labelled Hillary as a bitch and an emotional panderer out of pure sexist prejudice when (a) she certainly surged in the 2008 New Hampshire primary due to her crying moment in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and (b) she and her team were extremely ruthless and even contemptible in their use of veiled racial implication to appeal to lunch-bucket blue-collar sentiments in their attempts to defeat Sen. Barack Obama. And Palin, whom I regard as one of the most detestable life forms in the spotlight today, has certainly benefitted all her life from exploiting or at least using her looks at every turn. She’s no victim by my yardstick, and if she is, too effing bad.

Miss Representation had its premiere last night on OWN.

While passing along news that United Talent Agency has dropped Boardwalk Empire star Michael Pitt as a client, Deadine‘s Nikki Finke mentioned that she’d “never heard” of Pitt when this development crossed her radar screen. Where was she from ’02 to ’05? Pitt was unmissable and almost blazing when he starred in Barbet Schroeder‘s Murder By Numbers, Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers and Gus Van Sant‘s Last Days.

I’m grappling with Pete Hammond’s theory that recent disputes between the two top Republican presidential candidates about treatment of Mexican illegals may somehow raise the award-season profile of A Better Life.

Hammond notes that Texas Governor Rick Perry attempted three days ago to change an opinion that he’s soft on Mexican illegals because he once signed a bill allowing children of illegal immigrants to have their tuition paid under Texas’s education system. He did so by accusing Mitt Romney of hiring illegal gardeners at his home several years ago. And Hammond is saying, I gather, that the general rumpus over this issue might amplify interest in A Better Life.

I don’t think so. I think A Better Life sinks or sails under its own steam.

I had to make a couple of minor changes in the three contributor-funded Hollywood Elsewhere press screenings of Tyrannosaur, but they’re now set in cement. Screening #1 will happen at the Aidikoff Screening Room on Thursday, 10.27, at 3:30 pm. Screening #2 occurs at the Ocean Avenue Screening Room on Monday, 10.31, at 7:30 pm. And Screening #3 will happen at the Sunset Screening Room on the Strip on Wednesday, 11.2 at 4 pm.

Earlier today Strand Releasing’s Jenna Martin sent out her own emailed invitation to all Los Angeles press. Please RSVP to strand@strandreleasing.com. Friends of HE who didn’t receive Jenna’s invite or who contributed to the screening fund and would like to attend can rsvp to me via Hollywood Elsewhere.

I know I’ve posted this clip before, but it’s the only atmospherically intriguing, emotionally affecting moment in Lewis MIlestone‘s otherwise humdrum Ocean’s 11. And this fact raises a question. What other films are mostly unremarkable except for their finales? Mostly offbeat or mediocre affairs that somehow pulled it all together and brought it home with just the right ending?

The only other scene that works in this over-rated caper flick is when Richard Conte has his heart attack on the Vegas Strip and goes down saying “never the luck! never the luck!”

Remember — we’re looking only for movies that mostly blew chunks except for their last few minutes. They can’t otherwise be half good or somewhat passable. Their endings have to be the only truly decent thing about them.

The Ocean’s 11 finale is shot in front of the old Sands, which was destroyed in ’96 and was located in what is now the front approach area of the Venetian.

Set within the Serb-Bosnian conflict and particularly in a Serb-run concentration camp, Angelina Jolie‘s In the Land of Blood and Honey (Film District, 12.16) is a riff on the Romeo and Juliet/West Side Story disparate-lovers theme. A Bosnian woman (Zana Marjanovic) submits to the tender passions of her Serbian captor (Goran Kostic), but the soup is spoiled when Kostic’s father (Rade Serbedzija, constantly cast as a crude, low-minded brute) plants seeds of doubt.

“U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, the Republican majority leader in the U.S. House, canceled his scheduled speech at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business because if was going to be open to the first 300 people who showed up. Given that hundreds of Occupy Philadelphia protesters were planning to march from City Hall to the campus to protest the speech, that could have been lively audience.” — from Chris Brennan’s report in recent 10.21 posting in the Philadephia Daily News.

The two best films opening this weekend are Sean Durkin‘s Martha Marcy May Marlene and J.C. Chandor‘s Margin Call. The mob will be pouring into Paranormal Activity 3, of course. But Margin Call is the movie of the moment if the Occupy movement means anything to you.

It’s basically a 24-hour pressure-cooker piece about top analysts and brass at a Lehman Brothers-like outfit getting wind of the impending 2008 financial collapse, and about the various players deciding whether to make a clean breast of it, or sell off assets while the rest of the world is still in the dark.

Here’s what I wrote after seeing it at last January’s Sundance Film Festival: “Margin Call is a moderately engaging Wall Street drama — I’m giving it a 7.5 — that uses reasonably well-sketched characters in a brokerage firm to dramatize the 2008 meltdown. It’s a decently made film with one especially riveting boardroom scene, but without much snap or tension overall, and it radiates a fair amount of gloom.

“It provides solid, workmanlike performances from Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto, Demi Moore and Stanley Tucci. Jeremy Irons is the standout as the ruthless top dog.”

Yes, I called it “moderately engaging.” But the Occupy movement has given this above-average drama an extra dimension. So much so that I’m thinking of paying to see it this weekend. Paying!

If I was in Libya right now, I would assemble a mob to hunt down the guy who shot this video. “Severe punishment to all atrocious cell-phone video shooters!” would be our war cry. Once we capture him and have him down on his knees, men in the crowd will shout, “Don’t kill him! Don’t kill him! He has no talent but we need him alive!” And the shooter will likely say, “What do you want? Don’t kill me, my sons.” (Video on jump.)